The Kalinago Territory, previously known as the Carib Reserve or Carib Territory, is a district in the Caribbean island country of Dominica. It was established for the Indigenous Kalinago people who inhabited the region prior to European colonization and settlement.
The Kalinago Territory was officially formed by British colonial authorities in 1903, in a remote and mountainous area of Dominica's Atlantic coast. Its population remained largely isolated from the rest of the island throughout most of the 20th century, with only a ceremonial chief and no other formal self-governance. An incident later known as "the Carib War" escalated from a brief skirmish in the Territory in 1930, when law enforcement attempted to crack down on smuggling, to a political controversy ending with the abolition of the post of chief. The Chief was reinstated in 1952, and formalized local government was instituted the same year as part of an island-wide system. The "Carib Reserve Act", enacted the year of Dominica's independence in 1978, reaffirmed the Kalinago Territory's boundaries, its land management, and institutions of local government. In the last decades of the 20th century, modern utilities and infrastructure were finally introduced to the Kalinago Territory, which also established contacts with foreign governments and other indigenous peoples in the region.
The present population of the Kalinago Territory is estimated around 3,000 Kalinago people. Legal residents share communal ownership of all land within the Territory. The Kalinago Territory has limited local government in the institutions of the Kalinago Council, and its head the Kalinago Chief, which are the equivalent in power of village councils and council chairpersons elsewhere in Dominica. The administrative centre is in Salybia, the largest of eight hamlets in the Kalinago Territory.
A modern movement in the Kalinago Territory has supported the rediscovery and preservation of Kalinago culture. This has been fueled in part by Dominica's tourist industry. A model Kalinago village was established in the Territory in 2006. Cultural preservation groups stage performances at the model village and other locations, and practice traditional Kalinago crafts, such as making baskets and pottery, that are sold to tourists as souvenirs.
Category 5 Hurricane Maria (which would later strike Puerto Rico) made a direct hit onto Kalinago Territory in September 2017 causing severe damage to the territory, leaving residents in need. Electricity, Internet, and wired telephone service became unavailable in the territory and were expected to remain so for several months.
History
Establishment of the "Carib Reserve" Dominica is the only Eastern Caribbean island that still has a population of pre-Columbian native Kalinago, who were exterminated or driven from neighbouring islands. The Kalinago on Dominica fought against the Spanish and later European settlers for two centuries. Over time, however, their population declined and they were forced into remote regions of the island as European settlers and imported African slaves grew in number on the island. The first reservation of land for the Kalinago people occurred in 1763, when of mountainous land and rocky shoreline around Salybia, on the east coast, were set aside by British colonial authorities as part of the surveying of the island and its division into lots. A legend arose that this land was set aside by the request of Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III; from this another legend spread, and persisted among some Kalinago to the present, that Charlotte had set aside half of Dominica for the Kalinago people. Later colonial officials were unable to locate any record of a title deed for the , however. European settlers continued attempts to turn the Kalinago lands into plantations through the end of the 18th century, but the Kalinago successfully held out, often with the assistance of runaway slaves.