NASSAU, BAHAMAS – Culture is a somewhat ubiquitous as well as ambiguous construct which reflects off all peoples around the world. In The Bahamas, culture can mean quite different things to different people, for sure. There was a time when the question of “What is Bahamian culture?” was posed, a frequent spontaneous response was “Junkanoo”. That notwithstanding, today many more Bahamians are likely to give a more enlightened point of view. Still, a lot of those threads which used to make up the fabric of Bahamian culture have been removed or change in both subtle and dramatic ways.
Here we are in 2026, and the Government of The Bahamas has established a Ministry of Culture, Arts & Heritage, nominally giving a particular emphasis on culture. In past administrations, culture was usually an appendage to some other substantial national priority. Placed in the front or in the back, the question about culture remains. Those particular things we do in our particular way would undoubtedly define Bahamian culture. But really, what truly is Bahamian culture?
Could it be said that we have a culture of corruption? Is there an element of culture which adheres to that dictum of “whatever buck up goes”? We have all heard that popular song “tip, tip, tip, … errybody want tip …”. And, nowadays if Bahamians wake up and not hear news stories of horrific violent crimes, or other avoidable tragedies, some of us are likely to think that we must still be dreaming. Is that a growing part of our new Bahamian culture?
When our houses, our neighborhoods, and our extended communities are rife with squalor, filth and garbage, do we not become immune to seeing anything wrong with such mess? When we spend lots of time at the dump site, and leave there smelling like the dump, can we understand why others hold their noses as we come near? Or, are we offended, and take on a defensive posture of “dey mussy tink dey better than people!”. Whatever are our norms becomes our culture
Saturated with a growing dysfunction with regard to things like these continual ridiculous BPL outages, expanding pot holes obstacle courses, a judicial system ineffectively dealing with rapes and sexual abuses of toddlers to grannies, we might have to take some time in fixing our mouths to answer that all-important question; “What is Bahamian culture?”.
