It is now almost three decades since the PPP administration announced in 1995 that, henceforth, the month of September would be designated as “Amerindian Heritage Month”, and that the Guyanese State would launch a series of activities annually to bring to the consciousness and weave into the rich tapestry of Guyana the heritage of our Indigenous Peoples. Locked away in the hinterland from the plantation-colonised Coastal region, it was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” to 90% of the populace resident there.
Every year since 1995, Amerindian Heritage Month has been given a theme, but while a comprehensive series of activities were announced, this year, we have not been given a theme as yet. It might very well be that since the ambit of observances, along with the slew of programmes have been unleashed in Amerindian Communities, a “theme” would prove constricting. Most critically, however, since the identity of Indigenous peoples is so inextricably bound up with their land, the continuation of the legalization of titles to the land they occupy is significant.
We cannot fail to point out that Amerindian land titling was subjected to extremely gratuitous attacks from members of the APNU/AFC administration, which continue now they are out of office. Unlike the descendants of Columbus and those they colonised and hegemonised, the Indigenous Peoples view the land they occupy as sacred, since they are sustained in every way through the crops they can grow, the animals they can hunt or fish, the shelters they can build, the cotton fabric they can cover their nakedness with, and the herbs from the forest that provide medicines to cure their ailments. Like most modern men, our coastlanders can learn the true meaning of “environmental consciousness” from our Indigenous Peoples, who have not been completely brainwashed, as most of us are, into believing the earth is to be raped and ravished.
The APNU/AFC Government attempted to undermine – through stratagems such as attempting to subsume Amerindian Land Rights under a Commission of Inquiry into “African Ancestral Land Rights” and wild claims that some Indigenous Peoples are not actually “Indigenous” to Guyana – the authoritative legal acknowledgement of Amerindian Land Rights. Unlike what is being asserted by some individuals who are claiming to speak on behalf of African Guyanese, the lands to which Indigenous Peoples are been given title are not “reparations” for any past actions of the departed European powers, but an acknowledgement of their rights over land to which they are spiritually and culturally connected. The Dutch, whose rights the British assumed, never conquered, but made treaties with the Indigenous Peoples.
In 1965, the first Amerindian MP, Stephen Campbell, accompanied the PNC delegation, headed by Forbes Burnham, to London to negotiate the terms of Guyana’s imminent independence. Annex C of the Independence Agreement stipulated that the independent Government provide legal ownership or rights of occupancy for Amerindians over “areas and reservations or parts thereof where any tribe or community of Amerindians is now ordinarily resident or settled and other legal rights, such as the rights of passage, in respect of any other lands they now by tradition or custom de facto enjoy freedoms and permissions corresponding to rights of that nature.”
By 1976, the Amerindian Act passed by the then PNC Government to give effect to Annex C resulted in some Amerindian villages obtaining title to their lands. But it was not until a new Amerindian Act was passed by the PPP Government in 2006 that the full value of Annex C was given meaning. Unlike the allusions as to when any particular Amerindian Tribe arrived in Guyana, Art 60 (1) of the Act declares simply,
“An Amerindian Community may apply in writing to the Minister for a grant of State lands, provided – (a) it has been in existence for at least twenty-five years; (b) at the time of the application and for the immediately preceding five years, it comprised at least one hundred and fifty persons.”
