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Originally Posted by Polydamas
Well, the good news is that people who can take people apart with clubs and knives are not hard to find in any place with a lot of work in the field or bush and without powerful, trusted police forces. So you have a lot of room to chose something cool (or that you can find sources on), it all depends on who knew whom and what martial arts made the people organizing this course say "hello, I would like to learn more" and what made them say "that is cool but too different from what I do/she just can't make the transition to teaching foreign soldiers who have never handled a cutlass before."
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That's true.
Unfortunately, I can't find any sources on a formalized 'martial art' with the 'cutlass' (machete) in Dominica and St. Lucia. However, I've confirmed that it's by far the most common weapon in armed assaults on both islands, so it seems that the use of the weapon is about as common as on other Caribbean islands.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Polydamas
Edit: I would expect some pretty heavy race prejudice (and allergy to learning indigenous languages) in that founding cohort, but Draeger and Smith were active in that period, and sometimes adventurers become open-minded.
Da'Mon Stith does some research into indigenous African martial arts but that and the one video from Hati are literally as close as I can go.
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Uh... the Selous Scouts were 80% black and Joseph Khumalo
is, obviously, as black as an Ndebele man can be.
The white Selous Scouts recruits are about 50/50 Rhodesians and foreign recruits from a wide variety of other countries. They spent the war in Rhodesia working with black members of the Rhodesian security forces and turned members of
ZANLA and
ZIPRA.
Are some of them racist? Sure, as people in every country and organization can be racist, but every Selous Scout biography I've read specifically mentions how, after the war, they had difficulty fitting into South African society, because race relations there were completely different than in Rhodesia and, especially, alien to them as members of a majority black unit.
All of the Selous Scouts recruited knew some phrases in African languages, enough to be able to carry off the deception that was fundamental to their job.* And some of them speak numerous African languages fluently.
In general, while individuals could vary, the character of the early Night Riders was extremely open minded. Given how racially and religiously mixed the group was, it could hardly function otherwise.
*The white members of the teams also pretended to be ZANLA or ZIPRA fighters, wearing makeup and heavy clothing (for Africa).