“Buss di Chain and Free Your…?” St. Maarten Is Urged to Break Today’s Chains

The following is the 2026 Emancipation Day Address delivered by the Honorable Minister of Culture Melissa Gumbs.

Good morning, family. Good morning, St. Maarten.

We gather today at a sacred site. The Belvedere Plantation.

Where once our ancestors worked two sugar factories; where others worked in the main house, whose ruins we see just there.

Where mothers comforted each other in the dark, their children separated from their hip by circumstance and economics.

This July 1st, we sit where they sat, we walk where they toiled and our energy joins theirs as we mark Emancipation Day under the theme “Buss di Chain and free your…” Blank?

I know this theme may have raised some questions.

The first part is straightforward: actual chains were broken on Emancipation Day. Shackles fell from wrists and feet; bodies that had been kidnapped and sold were, by law, no longer property of another human being.

But then the theme continues. We don’t stop at the physical chains that once bound limbs. We chose to ask a harder question: Buss di Chain and free your… what? It is our invitation to the people, to you, to decide what freedom, what emancipation, means to you and what it should mean to us.

Will we free our minds, our voices?

Will we free our vision of who we are and what we, and by extension the generations after us, are permitted to become?

I ask these questions because our ancestors understood something that many struggle with today: that a person can be legally free and still be captive.

That they can still be told, in a thousand quiet ways, what they cannot do, cannot say and cannot dream.

All of it, stemming from what those same ancestors experienced right here on these grounds.

And so much of it, continued and held up by many who have stood where I stand today; many who have sat in the same building I sit in, every day.

Audre Lorde says “master’s tools will never dismantle master’s house.”

But do we know what master’s tools are? Do we know who master is?

Because it’s not just whips and chains that held the persons we honor today as captives.

Oppression is never accomplished through physical acts alone; it requires an entire ecosystem around it, one rooted in the corruption of community.

In the othering of people.

In the promotion of the self over the whole.

Each time we fall victim to the support systems of colonialism, each time we excuse our shortcomings and refuse to be better, each time we choose self over community, we are still building inside of master's house.

Real freedom asks us to pick up our own tools. Our own stories. Our own plans for what St. Maarten becomes; not what any investor demands.

“I am my ancestor’s wildest dream” is a quote I have always admired and one that I want us all to consider, each and every day that we decide to actually commit ourselves to our country’s healing.

Notice I didn’t say growth; we have grown, some would argue beyond what we can hold. But healing, improvement, is what we need now.

While she is not the originator of this quote, I believe Maya Angelou embodied it best when she wrote about rising: of being the dream and the hope of those who came before her.

The dream they could not yet touch but one they held within them, where no whip could reach.

When imagination was the only freedom they had, we are what they imagined. It is what we have inherited.

What does this inheritance, this birthright, ask of us today?

It asks that we finish the work of nation building; not just the buildings, the roads, the harbor, although we need those, too.

It asks us to build schools that teach our children their own history first, that allow them to learn as children do: by letting them dream, and dream BIG, as our ancestors once did, right here, on this land.

It asks that we build an economy that is dynamic, innovative and not reliant on the same old sea, sun and sand; one that taps into our Diaspora and helps them build the country that housed, clothed and fed them before sending them into the world.

It asks that we say no to exploitation disguised as opportunity, to invasion disguised as investment, and to forces, both domestic and foreign, that only threaten disharmony among us, locally and regionally.

It demands that we build a community that is confident enough to define beauty, success and leadership on our own terms, with our own hands.

Because emancipation was never meant to be remembered as a date.

It was meant to become a way of living.

A choice we make every day to reject division.

To reject complacency.

To reject mediocrity.

To reject the belief that someone else will build this country for us.

Our ancestors broke chains they did not choose.

The chains before us are different. They are fear. Cynicism. Corruption. Hatred. Keyboard Warriors. Motions of no confidence. Small-mindedness. The belief that St. Maarten cannot become more than it is today.

Those are the chains only we can break.

So today, as we honour those who came before us, let us also make a promise to those who will come after us.

That we will leave them a country stronger than the one we inherited.

A country that remembers where it came from, knows who it is, and refuses to let any bad actors, domestic or foreign, decide where it is going.

May we honour our ancestors not only with our words today, but with the choices we make tomorrow.

Because the greatest tribute we can offer them is not simply remembering their struggle, but continuing their work.

So today, I leave you with the same question we began with.

Buss di Chain and free your… what?

Whatever your answer is… make sure you live it, each and every day.

Happy Emancipation Day, St. Maarten. May we continue to rise, together.

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