Dear Editor,
Today is the first of September 2010. It is my half brothers and sisters’ month of celebrations in Guyana. They will be trying to shake off some of the economic oppression that afflicts them. Sometimes when you travel in Amerindian communities you get a different picture of many things you may have read in the newspaper. As a human being you would be compassionate if you saw how some of these indigenous people exist; life is not always comfortable for them.
I have read where most of the Amerindians are better off than they were twenty years ago, but this is not so. I have visited Amerindian villages and seen where many of them have to settle for one-and-a-half meals a day. In some homes they have extended families, and only two of them might be employed working for small wages, so when their pay day comes around they have little or nothing to take home, because it has been exhausted as a consequence of expenditure during the week.
I have known where some of the women have had to engage in sexual activities to obtain certain necessities. If they have to visit the Georgetown Public Hospital with one of their children more economic strain steps in.
A few days ago I was in the Kumaka/Mabaruma, Region One, and I saw a crowd. I enquired what it was about and was told that they were issuing pension books, but I saw young as well as old people. So I asked a young woman what was ‘sharing out,’ and she told me all who needed public assistance could apply now. The crowd was predominantly young Amerindian women with their children from different villages. I did not know that so many young Amerindian women needed public assistance. I asked one of them why she was here since she did not look as if she qualified for public assistance. Her reply was if the government wants to give us money now, we will take it because we do not always get it.
Amerindian people do not entertain animosity, but they do not suffer from amnesia. The modern Amerindian today is not like forty years ago; they want to live a better life if they can get the opportunity to do so.
An Amerindian man aged twenty-eight told me Amerindians owned their lands through their great grandparents, so how come they are being offered that same land again and it is said that Amerindians have land titles now. He said to me that if the land title could be used as collateral where he could go to the bank and receive a loan, that would be fine. He said he wants the same rights as the people on the coastal belt.
Yours faithfully,
Michael Hope
