Before 1492, the island of Haiti was the territory of the Arawak people (mainly Tainos) who lived from agriculture, hunting, fishing, trade, etc. In 1492, Christopher Columbus and Spanish colonists conquered the island, called it “Hispaniola.” They enslaved the Arawaks who eventually were decimated through diseases and genocide. In 1697, the island was divided into two (2) territories: the western third for France (Saint-Domingue) and the eastern part for Spain (Santo Domingo).
Although Haiti became independent in 1804 (the first independent black nation in the Americas), it was not until 1982 that the Minister of National Education, Joseph C. Bernard, published for the first time a decree for use of Haitian Creole (“Kreyòl”) as language of instruction in the first 10 years of school. In 1987, the Constitution of Haiti recognized Kreyòl and French as Haiti’s two official languages, with Kreyòl as the sole national language. This same Constitution called for the creation of a Haitian Creole Academy (Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen) which was inaugurated in December 2014. Today (in 2023), the Minister of National Education, Nesmy Manigat, is pushing for Kreyòl to be used as the language of instruction at all school levels. Active since 2019, the MIT-Haiti Platform is the only site exclusively dedicated to the co-creation and curating for freely available Kreyòl educational materials in all subjects and at all grade levels.~Michel DeGraff Ph.D
