Dear Editor,
On March 6 and 10, 1778 the first Great Durbar of Indians was held at Fort Island between Amerindian and government representatives. “The Indian chiefs were… presented with sticks with large silver knobs… hats with large silver pointed plumes, blue drill coloured cloths, axes, ribbons, looking glasses, and other articles, and asked to visit the Fort from time to time. The visitors were thereafter entertained in high revels, with ‘kiltum’ (cheap rum), bread, and provisions. The Indians on their part promised to be faithful, and to render assistance whenever called upon.” (ARF Webber, Centenary History: Handbook of British Guiana, 1931)
In 1793, Amerindian slavery was abolished, and in 1802 Protectors of Indians appointed. Abolition posed serious difficulties for tribes such as the Caribs, who derived their livelihood mainly from slavery. Indeed, when, in about 1810, a convention was concluded between the British and the Caribs, the Great Carib Chief Mahanarv in his presentation to the Court of Policy argued that if no one was willing to purchase the slaves in his possession he would have to kill them!
In exchange for the Convention of Friendship and a promise of annual gifts, Governor Bentinck apparently prevailed upon the chief to forswear such a radical solution. “These revels and presentations were maintained from year to year; but discontinued when the menace of revolting Negro slaves no longer existed.” (Ibid)
But even before the abolition of African slavery, William Hillhouse, Quarter Master General of Indians, claimed in 1828 that “… the Indian policy of the Government was transforming the Indians into pauperized pensioners.” He was immediately sacked and ordered ejected and not to again trespass on any Indian settlement. ARF Webber, commented that “Hillhouse was right; but the way of the reformer, like that of the transgressor, who but transgresses against established things, must always be hard” (Ibid).
Nearly 150 years on, writing on the dawn of the Co-operative Republic, Mr HO Jack, Minister without Portfolio, bemoaned the fact that the hinterland remained totally underdeveloped. According to him, “Development of the interior was actively discouraged since this might have meant competition with the sugar planters and a threat not only to their financial but also to their social and political position.” (Co-operative Republic, Guyana, 1970).
Jack went on to outline a hinterland development agenda comprising much of what is still being proposed. Amerindian leaders were to be democratically elected, provided with an allowance and allowed more involvement in the management of their area. Schools were being built, teachers upgraded and secondary school scholarships in place. Amerindians were attending the Guyana Technical Institute, the Guyana School of Agriculture at Mon Repos and being trained in the GDF and police force and as nurses. Further, hospitals and health centres were being constructed, an intensive malaria eradication campaign was on its way, a variety of crops including black-eyes and peanuts were introduced and being farmed and a number of Amerindians were being trained in the USA in ranching.
The 1976 Amerindian Act designated 77 areas comprising about 16% of Guyana as Amerindian land, though it appears that many of them were in the active possession of various logging and mining companies. And, perhaps because of his Amerindian heritage, Burnham left us with significant national indigenous imageries: the Golden Arrow Head, Mashramani, the Cacique Crown, Timehri (now Cheddi Jagan) Airport, etc. Yet, in 1990, some two decades after the establishment of the Cooperative Republic, Janette Forte, of the Amerindian Research Unit of the University of Guyana, could still describe Amerindians as comprising “the poorest and most neglected stratum of Guyanese society.”
The present administration has introduced a new Amerindian Act, has begun land titling and has generally continued the efforts in health, education, etc. But after nearly two decades in office and more than two hundred years since the abolition of Amerindian slavery and the first Durbar, the World Bank 2009 Country Assistance Strategy could state that: “Poverty rates are very similar for the Afro Guyanese (31.6 per cent), Indo-Guyanese (30 per cent) and the mixed (33.7 per cent) population.
The Amerindians, the minority group largely residing in isolated rural interior areas, experience the highest poverty incidence in the country (around 78 per cent). This ethnic group represents only 9.2 per cent of the population in Guyana, but contains one third of the extreme poor population.”
For the most part, indigenous peoples are similarly deprived throughout the continent and the 1973 ‘Manifesto of the Quechua and Aymara Indians’ sought to provide an explanation. It argued that “neither formal education nor party politics nor technical advancement has brought about any significant change in rural life… We peasants are convinced that development will take place in the countryside and in the country as a whole only when we become the designers of our own progress and masters of our destiny… The political activity of the colonial administration and the republican governments has been highly destructive, causing some of us to assimilate grievous faults of the corrupt and corrupting politicians. They have sought to use us as steps and stairs for satisfying their basest ambitions and passions.” It is essentially this kind of instrumentalism which I discern in your editorial ‘Living in the past’ (SN, August 30) and elsewhere, that has inspired this correspondence. In these discourses, Amerindians are portrayed as the means to party or national political ends.
Today, throughout Latin America indigenous peoples have taken control of many local and national governments, and in 2005, Evo Morales became the first indigenous president. Whether or not they collaborate with other parties, what all these groups appear to have in common are clearly focused agendas. For example, though just about 3% of the population in Argentina, the indigenous people have forced the government to ratify and implement ILO Convention 169, ‘Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries.’ In Guyana, however, policies that have had a significant impact upon the indigenous population have come upon them like thieves in the night because they have not been sufficiently organised and focused to significantly affect changes.
My contention is that if the indigenous people are within a reasonable time to share equitably in what Guyana has, they need to develop their specific political organisation and agenda and use their statistical weight to force its implementation. Of course, I am not for one moment denying that Guyana needs a new management arrangement and that Amerindians are well located to facilitate a change, but even here I will argue that they will be better able to aid that transformation if driven by their specific needs and agenda.
Yours faithfully,
Henry B Jeffrey
