The National Toshaos Council (NTC) yesterday declared that the Kaieteur National Park (KNP) is an infringement on the rights of the Patamona community and it called on President David Granger to address this matter and to have all charges recently brought against persons mining in the area dropped.
A crackdown on illegal mining in the KNP ordered by the President resulted in nearly two dozen residents of the Region Eight community of Chenapau being arrested and brought to the city. They were served with summonses and will have to appear in court in Mahdia in July charged with violating the Protected Areas Act.
In a statement yesterday, the NTC, which recently clashed with the Granger administration over the establishment of a controversial lands commission, defended the rights of the Chenapau residents to operate in the area.
The NTC called on Granger to “closely examine the events that unfolded in the recent months as it relates to the Indigenous Peoples of Guyana, the infringement on our rights by private entities aided by Government and sometimes by Government themselves.
“Recently, a Commission of Inquiry into Lands was established without due consultations to the Indigenous Peoples whose lives it affects. It is most important to understand the objections and how, without due process, it seriously impacts Guyana’s Indigenous Peoples”.
It noted that under the PPP/C administration of the late President, Janet Jagan, the Kaieteur National Park was established. In 1999, the NTC said that the KNP was extended.
All of this was done without consultation based on information from the Village of Chenapau, the statement said while noting that the KNP sits on traditional Patamona Lands.
“Within the Park’s boundaries sits almost all the traditional hunting, farming and fishing grounds of the Patamonas of the Upper Potaro. While the KNP act makes provision for Indigenous Peoples Rights to be respected, the very existence of the Park is an infringement on the rights of the Indigenous Peoples. There is only one set of peoples whose human rights are tied to their land rights and those are the Indigenous Peoples, Globally. This is not isolated to Guyana”, the NTC argued.
In February of 2016, the NTC noted that the Amerindian Land Titling team wanted to demarcate the Village of Chenapau but the community refused demarcation. While it may have been viewed as offensive by the team, the NTC said it is important to see the wisdom in that very historic decision.
“The majority of farmlands in Chenapau were washed away by the (recent) floods, and this is not isolated only to this year. It formulated part of the objections to Demarcation.
“Had the community accepted demarcation, it would severely handicap the community’s ability to derive any form of subsistence for their livelihoods.
“It is important to note that after a flood, for traditional farming it would take about a year to re-establish a harvestable crop not shorting the provision of seeds and necessary stems to cultivate. It is also important to note that without these much-utilised crops, and all the food that animals depend on would have been washed away so the very task of hunting in itself would be excessively difficult. Be very cognisant of the fact that the park sits on the primary hunting and fishing grounds for the Patamona Peoples of the Upper Potaro.
“While the Coast enjoys the replenishment of the markets by a wide range of farmers, the hinterland does not. Our Peoples continue to live in harmony with the forests and depend on that very forest for survival”, the NTC said.
The NTC added that it is only natural that after these disasters, that the people’s “ millennia’s old survival instincts should take hold, however, these very practices are now deemed to be criminal as the Protected Areas has now criminalised our very traditions and infringed on our human rights.
“After infringing on our Human Rights, denying our peoples the ability to survive by our traditional means, and now criminalising our activities, it is only clear that we must now look at the solutions to ensure the very survival of our peoples”.
The statement called on Granger to take a close look at the dynamics of the situation and to have it resolved “not only from a humanitarian perspective, but also for the very survival of the Patamona Peoples of the Upper Potaro”. The NTC also called on the President to have all the illegal mining charges dropped and to work with the Indigenous Peoples to find solutions to these and other problems affecting the Indigenous Peoples of Guyana “as he had promised”.
