….his Jacket (or grass skirt)
When Columbus stumbled over our neck of the woods – while looking for India and its goodies – he claimed to’ve “discovered” us!! Can you imagine the arrogance? So our First People who’d been living here for thousands of years weren’t “people” like he and the Spanish? What were they? Mountains and forests that had no consciousness and had to be “discovered” by people?
Well, to be frank, that’s what the Spanish and the other Europeans who followed them to claim chunks of real estate explicitly insisted. The First Peoples were “uncivilised” and so were not worthy to be on the same level as “real people” like the Europeans. Isn’t that ironic? A people who welcomed the strange looking species with open arms and offered them kindness were the ones who were “uncivilised”??!!
Well, it seems a lot of us still have that backward mindset five hundred years after Columbus’ arrogant assumptions. There are those who begrudge the First Peoples a piece of Guyana’s land! imagine that!! We grab the People’s land…running it in by giving it a name from their language (Guyana – land of many waters) and now say they’re “asking” for too much!?
Now even Prezzie – a trained historian, no less – just got into the act. After he took the lead in declaring Nov 7 to be “National Villages Day” he attended an “Indaba” and “Inaugural National Day of Villages” at Victoria. Now we don’t know if he was merely being polite and was driven into hyperbole in front of the massed Victorians. But emphasising that this commemoration included “all villages in Guyana – and specifically mentioning African, East Indian and Amerindian villages, he called Victoria the “mother of all villages”.
Now hold it!! If all those Amerindians received their land titles that’re being objected to because – as the law states – they were occupying them from “time immemorial”, weren’t their villages also established from “time immemorial”. And thus preceding Victoria. Surely the First Peoples weren’t living in caves but in houses – humble thatched ones, but still houses – grouped in villages. This is not to deny Victoria’s importance on the coast…but we’re talking about the entire Guyana – as Prezzie himself emphasised.
To once again not give recognition to what the name “First Peoples” signifies is very disheartening when we hear the cries of “social cohesion” from Point Playa to Crabwood Creek. Such an elision of the First Peoples’ role in the foundational national narrative is to really “diss” them.
Our First Peoples fought off the first Europeans that “colonised” their lands – and forced them to make treaties with them.
Power to the (First) Peoples!!!
…his prejudices
By now you know that while he’s not a fanatic about it, your Eyewitness does feel the “right to bear arms” is not to be treated lightly. Of course, being a colony of Britain, we weren’t allowed to exercise that right which the Americans introduced after they threw out old King George III. For us, who “received” our “independence” through supplication and betrayals, we never got the right to bear arms in the Constitution that was pulled out from some desk drawer at Lancaster House and handed to us in 1966.
Of course, when Burnham decided to change the Constitution and install himself as the first constitutional dictator of Guyana, he wasn’t about to change the status quo. During the PPP regime, at least they began to issue licences for private citizens to carry guns – after a thorough background check by our Police.
Saying that some of these private persons were “renting” their guns to criminals, Prezzie proposed to scrap the system.
Isn’t this new-colonialism?
…his cricket salary
The WICB’s something else! After firing the Coach, demoralising the team into a mass of quivering jelly, thumbing their noses at Caricom leaders, they’re now levying 20 per cent of the salaries for players who play overseas. Even those they haven’t signed!!
