Dear Editor,
The UN’s designation of 2011 as the International Year for People of African Descent was intended to inspire celebrations of our achievements in the diaspora as well as a means to reestablish our dignity as a people.
The most important patrimony of our foreparents has been our ancestral land, including the philosophical basis of its ownership. Our ancestors acquired land by purchase, collectively and individually, and decreed it as – “belonging to the vast family of whom many might be dead, a few are alive and countless unborn.”
And, like the Brundtland recommendation, our lands must be husbanded in such a way “that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs.”
The history of ancestral lands in Guyana (as is the case in many other Third World countries) has been one of expropriation, whether by parate execution (in the colonial period); as being ‘Not Beneficially Occupied’ (in the Burnham period); and by greed and corruption (in the Jagdeo period).
Since the Mabo case in Australia on aboriginal land rights the courts have become protective of ancestral land. We in Guyana might want to follow the precedent adopted to resolve the 1997 elections’ conflicts by establishing a Systems Review and Audit (‘Audit‘) Committee with terms of reference to-
(i) determine how much of the ancestral lands within the villages was acquired or alienated to or by the state and how much of such land is now owned by the descendants of the original owners;
(ii) conduct a valuation of all such lands;
(iii) determine the mode of acquisition and the kind and amount of compensation paid (if any) for the acquisition of such lands by or via the state;
(iv) advise on whether or not the unused state land can be returned to the villages;
(v) determine what options are available to the people to resolve their grievances; and
(vi) make any other appropriate recommendations for the protection of ancestral land.
Yours faithfully
Rudolph W James
