Trinidad’s First Peoples against renaming of Piarco Airport

(Trinidad Guardian) The San­ta Rosa First Peo­ples com­mu­ni­ty said it is not in favour of renam­ing the Piarco In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port due to its con­nec­tion to the First Peo­ples’ his­to­ry.

Ear­li­er this week, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that he will take a sug­ges­tion to Cab­i­net to re­name the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port af­ter the coun­try’s first Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams, pend­ing his fam­i­ly’s con­sent. The sug­ges­tion was made while Dr Row­ley was in New York City.

In a re­lease on Fri­day, chief Ri­car­do Bharath Her­nan­dez said the First Peo­ples were fol­low­ing the discussion con­cern­ing the re­nam­ing of the air­port with great in­ter­est as, “A place name in such a promi­nent and vis­i­ble place as the coun­try’s In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port is a sig­nal ho­n­our to the First Peo­ples.”

They said they do be­lieve that “ap­pro­pri­ate em­blems of ho­n­our should be giv­en to out­stand­ing contribu­tors to the na­tion’s de­vel­op­ment such as Dr Williams,” and note that sev­er­al pres­ti­gious institutions are al­ready named in his ho­n­our – The Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, al­so known as the Er­ic Williams Plaza and The Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex.

They also highlighted that af­ter col­o­nisa­tion, sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties with in­dige­nous names were renamed by Span­ish and British colonis­ers.

The First Peo­ples con­tin­ued, “The re­main­ing In­dige­nous names of places and In­dige­nous na­tions such as Ari­ma, Ch­agua­nas, Cha­cachacare, Pi­ar­co, Cou­va, Arou­ca, Cara­pachaima, Tamana, for ex­am­ple, are precious to the First Peo­ples as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the lost lan­guages.”

“This sug­ges­tion of re­nam­ing the air­port through eras­ing a name in an orig­i­nal lan­guage of the First Peoples would fur­ther erode the First Peo­ples Her­itage and Lega­cy which our Com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to strug­gle to pre­serve,” they added.