The granddaughter of Reggae Music legend Bob Marley is getting involved in a campaign to preserve and protect the site of Jamaica’s first Rastafarian community.  Ownership of the land isn’t clear and might involve colonial racial prejudice dating back to the 1930s.

“We are not going anywhere, one by one we are filing in, we are going to camp out and reason,” said Marley’s granddaughter Donisha Pendergast of the occupation of the place Rastas call “The Pinnacle”:  A hilltop near Sligoville northwest of the capital Kingston. 

One quarter-acre lot was already declared a national monument.  But the Rastafarian community wants a similar designation for the other five lots, claiming that the property belongs to the descendants of Leonard Howell, the acknowledged founder of the religious movement.

The problem is that the Howell family has no clear title to the land, even though supporters say there is nearly a century of history of continuous use and cultural connection.  Howell’s son says the paperwork was destroyed by colonial authorities who thought it “presumptuous” for a black man to own land.

“No black person in Jamaica owned property, nothing compared to Pinnacle,” he told the Jamaica Observer. “They tried everything to chase my father off that land.”

The case is heading back to the courts in Jamaica this week.