"I fished with my father ever since I've been seven or eight,"
says Ricky Wright, vice president of the Gullah/Geechee Fishing
Association. "It passes down because it's just a natural thing
for us -- my parents did it, I'm quite sure my parents' parents
did it, and it just descended down." It is this natural
connection that helps the Gullah/Geechee community tie their
past to their future survival. "[It's] almost like history
repeating itself, what goes around comes around," says Wright.
"OK, we've entered the computer age, but we still have to have
hands-on for most of the things we do and fishing is like hands-
on. You've got to do it to know it -- to keep the culture strong
is to keep what you do intact." Another key trait marking the
population's distinctive cultural identity is the use of an
English-based creole vernacular known as Gullah. Professor
Salikoko S. Mufwene, of the department of linguistics at the
University of Chicago, says the enslaved Africans and their
descendants created the dialect in re