Following the first executive meeting of the National Toshaos Council (NTC) in late February, the Indigenous peoples’ representative body is now accusing Government, through its advisers in the Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs Ministry, of interfering in the affairs of some Village Councils.
“There are communities whose Council members have been sanctioned to meetings without the Toshao’s knowledge to undermine the credibility and legitimacy of the Toshao and Village Councils,” the NTC said in a letter to its members.
“They (the Government) are seeking to politicise the office of the Toshao… this is a 
threat to the Indigenous peoples as it would see no moment of any of these issues,” the letter added.
The letter, seen by Guyana Times, also addressed the Government’s total disregard for the Council’s budgetary needs. The NTC informed the Toshaos that it requested a subvention that was in keeping with the requirements of its mandate, but instead, Government handed them a measly $16 million subvention.
In the past, the NTC highlighted that approximately $4 million is required to facilitate one of the four quarterly meetings for Council executives, pointing out that the quarterly meetings alone would consume the total budgetary allocation. They related that this leaves no money for the Council to travel to various isolated and hard to reach Indigenous communities to host outreaches to promote good governance and educate the Indigenous people of their rights.
“They (the Government) have also given $50 million to Bina Hill Institute and $30 million to Arnaputa – a new NDC (Neighbourhood Democratic Council). While we do not disagree that these are needed resources for these two important institutions, the NTC represents over 83,000 Indigenous people in over 212 communities while Bina Hill has a population of roughly 200 and Arnaputa has less than 3000. This shows that they are not committed to the Indigenous peoples,” the NTC noted.
Additionally, the NTC noted that to date, there has been no movement on the Government’s part to have a revision of the Amerindian Act, despite the entire Amerindian community calling on Government to have this done.
“Because of the non-movement by the Government, the NTC, APA (Amerindian Peoples’ Association), UMDC (Upper Mazaruni District Council), NPDC (North Pakaraimas District Council) and several other organisations have taken a proactive step to this revision process. We have asked the Government to come on board with “The Peoples” proposal on moving it forward,” the letter informed.
However, it was indicated that Government has yet to respond to that suggestion.
Land titling
The Council also accused the Government of not staying true to the 2013 agreement between Guyana and the Kingdom of Norway to address the issue of land titling.
In 2013, Guyana in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) signed a US$10.7 million Amerindian Land Titling Contract facilitated under the Guyana/Norway agreement.
The NTC informed that under the project, some 67 communities were supposed to be titled and Government had committed to not renew and grant new leases in Indigenous communities, proposed titled area or extension.
“What we now know is that they have not held to this commitment. In fact, we now understand that they are speeding up the processing of leases in some areas. Rockstone for example has such an issue,” the Council noted.
“There are also significant issues surrounding Nappi and Satellite and Yupikari. The Government has taken an aggressive step to dispossess these communities of their ancestral lands. The community has said when options are exhausted, they intend on protesting in Georgetown and the NTC is fully in support of them,” the letter indicated.
The NTC informed its members that if those issues are not addressed then they will forever be begging for their rights to be respected. Additionally, they noted it has nothing to do with politics acknowledging that some communities received support from various administrations but further stated that successive governments have had the opportunity to holistically address the issues plaguing the Indigenous communities but have all failed to do so.
“If the Government cannot commit to implementing a change for our peoples and address ‘our peoples’ rights’, we are asking all our peoples – ‘The Indigenous peoples’ to gather in Georgetown for a ‘mass protest’ for our peoples’ rights. We should not be silent anymore!” the letter concluded.
