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so the first time most people even
encounter gullah as a word or gichi is
because they hit one of us and they're
like whoa what's that you know and they
find it interesting well
gullah is our language
gichi is essentially a dialect of the
dulla language that grew out of
gulli-speaking people talking to people
who speak american english for the most
part and elizabethan english
so i'm actually a head of state and a
queen mother so i'm a spiritual leader
and a political leader for the gullah
gucci people and this is my third term
we have our own constitution we have our
own flag
where our culture actually emerged from
the soil or the sea islands between
jacksonville north carolina and
jacksonville florida
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not just sierra leone as many many
ethnic groups and that make up the lagi
culture the angolans were the first ones
brought over and when they would be sold
they would actually put out
one would say flyers nowadays they would
put up posters that read we have a cargo
of gullah for sale there was also people
from the gambia nigeria so on and so
forth that were brought here and that
mixed together and along with those
angolans that were here before them
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one of the things that made us stay here
was the fact that during the u.s civil
war we were left here so there's no one
to enslave you so we were already here
continuing to work the land continuing
to be able to grow food we stayed
because we could sustain ourselves we
stayed because the land and the water
was viable we had already created a
cultural landscape here that we still
maintain unto this day we still do a lot
of the same things i still grow food on
the same land that my ancestors were
forced to work on and that later boarded
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because as long as that is the case then
we will be healthy
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