#territorealities

Principle #1:  Keep like things together.  All the forks in the house are kept together.  In most cases, you won’t find stray forks stored in the living room or the bathroom.  Keeping like things together simplifies and brings clarity.

Principle #2:  Assign a single, consistent and defined place for things.  There is only one place in your home where forks are kept.  If I came to your home and asked you for a fork, you’d know exactly where to go to get one.  Can you say the same for a safety pin?  An extension cord?  The receipt for your computer?  Your 2006 tax returns?  If you have a clearly defined place for these things, you would.   

Principle #3:  Create boundaries and therefore limits. There is a fork-shaped cut out in the silverware drawer that lets you know where forks go. And there is a finite space for forks.  Finite space is good.  A huge house with an attic and basement is nice, but it can also lead to possession by one’s possessions.  Boxes of nostalgia literally hanging over your head is a weight, whether felt consciously or sub-consciously.  Living in a 500-square foot apartment is like living with an enlightened master who teaches aparigraha, or non-acquisitiveness, and general self-restraint - boundaries of the mind and spirit so to speak.  These in turn foster conscious consumption, simplification and letting go.  The limited space in the silverware drawer prevents the over-accumulation of forks and teaches us to live within our space means.  Living within our space means is just as important as living within our financial means.  Just as accumulating more credit card debt than you can pay off becomes a financial burden, accumulating more stuff than you can comfortably cohabitate with can be similarly burdensome. 

Territoriality was the primary concern of both the Jamaican colonial government and the Accompong Maroons in the period following emancipation, notably 1842 – 1905. Maroons were granted land pursuant to the peace treaty in 1739 and the community decided to hold this land in common. Maroons, in exchange for being allowed to own land, sell goods, and have some free movement across Jamaica had to capture runaway slaves, quell slave rebellions, and fight Jamaica’s enemies. However, after slavery ended in 1834, the Jamaican government saw no continuing need for the Maroons to function this way in Jamaican society. The Jamaican government, in trying to extend their jurisdiction over the sovereign Accompong, decided to try to acquire more control over this population by changing the relationship of the community to their treaty-granted lands. The government passed legislation that required Jamaica’s Maroon communities to change their land ownership from communal to individual and granted the Maroon communities all the “rights and privileges of the Queen’s subjects.” The legislation unilaterally ended the treaty between the Maroons and the government and subjected the Maroons to Jamaica’s laws. Due to the unilateral nature of changing Accompong borders, the Accompong resisted the implementation of the act and subsequent attempts by the Jamaican government to reimagine their communities by way of territorial borders for indeed individual land ownership inherently undermined the Accompong community.

There was more than one territorial agenda during the post-emancipation period. While the colonial government was determined to eliminate the Maroons’ borders, the Accompong Maroons were determined to maintain and possibly expand their borders. Oral narratives from this community reveal that the British took advantage of Colonel Cudjoe (the military leader of the Maroons during the Maroon Wars) and instead of granting him 10,000 acres, instead gave him 1,000. Hence, it is through this narrative we understand the Accompong’s motivations for trying to acquire Cooks Bottom, a place where the superintendent’s house was, which gave them a means of making a claim for this parcel.