A number of Bahamians will be honored and dubbed "nation builders" on Friday, July 4 at 7:30 p.m. at a ceremony at Mt. Nebo Baptist Church on Marshall Road, please accept this invitation to attend.
Nominations were received for honorees; many were accepted and the result was this upcoming ceremony. The honorees, from across the country, are worthy role models who can only serve to inspire us to higher heights in our quest of nation building.
National honors are long overdue as a replacement to colonial honors. We had hoped they would have been in place by now, especially since draft legislation is well-advanced for it to happen. I urge our government to have the fortitude in bringing our local honors in place. It is great, though, that no colonial awards have been presented in a long time. I hope they have been abolished forever. Our cultural advancement demands we replace colonial honors and thus catch up with progressive countries in our region.
Yes, we have come a long way with the attainment of a National Heroes Day and Majority Rule Day holidays, however the package must be completed with national honors. We must free ourselves of this colonial mindset. In fact the attainment of independence is incomplete without it, thanks to champions like the late Dr. Jackson Burnside, Paul Adderley and A.O. Hanna for downright refusing to accept such an enslaving, outdated award. We hail them as real national heroes of the first order.
The government is urged to appoint a cultural commission with powers to cause us as a society to advance politically and culturally. I had only hoped that we would have seen the marrying of the two ideas -- Heroes Day with a national system of honors.
With all this should come national dress. The Heroes Committee wishes to advance ideas now to establish our national dress. Please forward your ideas to us.
Let us celebrate our strengths and pray we learn from all mistakes. The day needs to come when we stop rehashing ideas again and again. I only wish there was a non-political set up to oversee our celebration from start to finish and hopefully advance a more dynamic and less boring celebration. We are too last minute people, shackled to keep things one way all the time. There are no new ideas for independence celebrations. In Antigua, heroes are declared and celebrated within the context of the independence celebrations. When will we stop dragging our feet and truly advance as leaders in our region.
o Reverend Canon S. Sebastian Campbell is the rector at St. Gregory's Anglican Church.
Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian
