The postdisaster environment presents a multitude of ethical and logistical challenges for researchers interested in gathering timely and unpreserved data. Due to the unavailability of secondary data in the immediate aftermath of disasters, postdisaster researchers have become dependent on qualitative methods that involve engaging with disaster survivors as research participants. This is a common interaction in the Caribbean due to the region’s high occurrence of disasters and human participant engagement by external researchers during the postdisaster phase. However, due to escalating unethical practices since the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Caribbean nations are beginning the process of censuring unapproved postdisaster fieldwork by external researchers. In this study, the authors approach these ethical considerations through a justice lens to propose a checklist for postdisaster researchers interested in ethical fieldwork and justice for their research participants. Correspondence with Caribbean emergency managers confirms the negative perception toward external researchers and the trend of enacting protocols that stop unvetted community access following disasters. However, these local agencies acknowledge the benefits of ethical postdisaster research and are open to serving as research coordinating centers. Such coordinating centers would harness local capabilities and lower the likelihood of the duplication of research topics and the overburdening of survivors as research participants.

Andros Island, Bahamas, served as a refuge for freedom-seeking Black Seminoles who escaped from Florida. They began landing secretly on the island in 1821 after the British in Nassau reneged on their promise to help the Seminole Indians and Black Seminoles fight against White aggressors in Florida. While conducting research on Andros Island in 1937, anthropologist John Goggin met Felix MacNeil, a descendant of the Florida Black Seminole refugees. His encounters with MacNeil and others led Goggin to conclude that he had positively identified the legendary “Wild Indians” of Andros Island as descendants of the Florida Black Seminoles. The majority of residents in the present-day settlement of Red Bays on Andros Island are descended from those original exiles from Florida. This article provides an ethnohistorical perspective of the Black Seminole legacy in Florida and the Bahamas that focuses on the oral history and lives of Felix MacNeil and other descendants.

This pilot project conducted by researchers from the University of Central Florida (UCF) seeks to answer the question: Does a real-time, two-way, mobile, remote webcasting system have special properties for learning compared with traditional distance learning platforms? Students enrolled in two online, undergraduate UCF courses explored South Africa via a 'Cultural Transect', which we define as a method for recording and observing occurrences of cultural phenomena through regions and across borders of contemporary cultural systems around the world. The researchers hypothesize that this interactive Cultural Transect model augmented the traditional classroom by providing experiential access and interaction with authentic data, content, people, and real-world contexts.

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