The British did not give the Kalinago their territory out of generosity. In 1763, when colonial surveyors carved Dominica into plantation lots, they set aside 232 acres of mountainous land and rocky shoreline around Salybia - terrain too poor and too remote for European agriculture. A legend arose that Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, had requested the land be reserved, and a grander myth followed: that she had set aside half of Dominica for the Kalinago. No title deed was ever found. For over a century, European settlers tried to push into Kalinago lands anyway, but the terrain and the people's determination kept them out. In 1902, Administrator Henry Hesketh Bell visited the communities and proposed expanding the territory to 3,700 acres - roughly 2% of Dominica. His proposal was adopted in 1903, and a Kalinago chief was officially recognized, given a silver-headed staff and a sash embroidered 'The Chief of the Caribs' in gothic lettering. The population at the time was about 400, deeply isolated from the rest of the island.

For decades, the Kalinago lived largely self-sufficiently, trading small quantities of rum and tobacco with neighboring French islands. In 1930, colonial authorities decided this trade undercut government revenue and sent five armed policemen into the Territory to seize goods and arrest suspects. In Salybia, a crowd gathered and threw stones and bottles. The police fired into the crowd, killing two Kalinago and wounding others, then fled to Marigot without their prisoners or contraband. The colonial Administrator's response was grotesquely disproportionate: he summoned the HMS Delhi, a Royal Navy light cruiser, which fired star shells and swept the coast with searchlights. Marines landed to hunt for suspects while the Kalinago hid in the forest. The Times of London reported, incorrectly, that the Kalinago had rioted in the capital, Roseau. Chief Jolly John surrendered and was charged, though the prosecution collapsed within a year. The consequences for the Kalinago, however, were real. The position of chief was abolished, the staff and sash confiscated, and the former chief was forbidden from calling himself 'king.' The incident is still known, with bitter irony, as 'The Carib War.'

The position of chief was not restored until 1952, when the colonial Administrator personally conducted the investiture and returned the staff and sash. The Kalinago Council was created the same year. But the deeper reclamation took longer. For decades, the territory bore the official name 'Carib Reserve' - a label the Kalinago increasingly rejected on two grounds. 'Reserve' carried the weight of colonial control, and 'Carib' was a European invention, the root of the word 'cannibal,' assigned to them by the very colonizers who had tried to destroy them. In 2015, after sustained advocacy by Territory residents, Dominica's parliament officially changed the name to Kalinago Territory. The chief's title changed too: no longer the 'Carib Chief' but the Kalinago Chief. It was a small legislative act with enormous symbolic weight - the right of a people to be known by their own name.

Modern infrastructure came late to the Territory. A motorable road did not arrive until 1970. Electricity began installation in 1986, and by 1990, more than half of households still lacked it. The Kalinago remain among the poorest people in Dominica, which is itself among the poorest nations of the Lesser Antilles. But poverty is not the whole story. Since the late 20th century, a cultural resurgence has taken hold. The Kalinago Barana Aute, a reconstructed pre-Columbian village in the hamlet of Crayfish River, opened in 2006 as a place where traditional crafts, dance, and cassava processing are demonstrated and taught. The larouma reed basket - handwoven in brown, white, and black traditional patterns - has become a symbol of Kalinago identity, one of the few crafts maintained in an unbroken line from pre-colonial times. Cultural groups like the Karifuna and Karina travel throughout the Caribbean, South America, and Europe sharing Kalinago heritage. When Hurricane Maria devastated the Territory in September 2017, severing electricity, internet, and phone service, the community rebuilt on the same terms it has always insisted upon: together, on their own land, by their own decisions.