Research On Bunce Island
Three American scholars have done extensive research on Bunce Island. Anthropologist Joseph Opala did the research that linked Bunce Island to the Gullah people and organized the well-publicized Gullah homecomings portrayed in the documentary films “Family Across the Sea" (1990), “The Language You Cry In" (1998), and “Priscilla’s Homecoming" (in production). Historian David Hancock documented Bunce Island in great detail during the period of Grant, Oswald & Company in his study Citizens of the World (1997). Archaeologist Christopher DeCorse and his team conducted a thorough survey of Bunce Island’s ruins for a report submitted to the Sierra Leone Government (2006).
African-American TV actor Isaiah Washington visited Bunce Island in 2006, after learning through a DNA test that some of his ancestors came from Sierra Leone. Washington later donated $25,000 to a project to create a computer reconstruction of Bunce Island as it appeared in the year 1805. Project directors Joseph Opala and Gary Chatelain at James Madison University are producing a 3-D image of the castle using computer-aided design that allows the viewer to enter all the structures and see them as they appeared 200 years ago. Their animation will be made available to museums and educational institutions. A traveling exhibit on the history of Bunce Island containing some of these images is available in the U.S. and U.K.
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