Dear Editor,
Living in the interior can be heaven with its tranquility, greenery, wide open savannas and beautiful sceneries etc. But besides these external glories there are serious underlying issues that affects us indigenous peoples such as: political handouts, land issues, substandard construction of roads, mal-functioning ICT hubs in our villages and others that serve to keep us appeased with top downward systems; the political elites control and trample on us. A sociohistorical reality that is not new to us, and an evil from colonial times. However, on the flipside, in some other experiences we appreciate and value government’s constant support and services in health and education from tax payer’s money for our people. These ‘services’ are pivotal for our interior population not to be left behind even though more needs to be done.
In regards to lands, Indigenous people are the first to occupy Guyana even before the state was formed. However, being first people, it is ridiculous that we have to seek permission from the government to give us our terra firma. It should be the other way around; we demarcating and issuing lands to the state. Unfortunately, this is how conventional colonial system perceive us, the state to give us lands but small islands, while our growing population needs more.
The other absurd delivery service governments (the incumbent and even opposition when in power) give us, because we are indigenous people and live in the bush, is slab-dash work of constructing roads in our communities. The roads are not built well, there are always potholes that damage our vehicles, while authorities give their party affiliates some of the money and most is taken by corrupt politicians of this country. This treatment to our first people must be condemned by all and we must hold governments to their word, in order to receive better and substantial service instead of low -grade roads to our people.
Editor, I could go on more, but I would like to bring to attention a third difficulty we are facing. It’s with the Information and Communi-cation Technology (ICT) hubs in our communities. Although we kind of value government’s initiative in establishing these internet services in our villages, we found them to be a waste of money because they are often not achieving their objectives. Many persons in the community use them at the same time and the system gets slow, thus not allowing any of us to do our GOAL studies online effectively. Its a big challenge and very frustrating experience for us all.
Furthermore, when the system gives problem its down for a good amount of time, and after weeks we see technicians from Georgetown coming to repair them for us. We don’t have a problem with people coming to our communities, but can the government train some indigenous young people to rectify the technical problems to our ICT hub in our villages? Aren’t we capable enough to learn and perform such tasks too, rather than flying people from Georgetown which is very expensive to come to fix our internet in far flung communities when a technical problem arises?
Editor, these slap-dash works and wasting of tax money on us for our votes is typical of all governments of this county to appease and control us for votes. These being said, I hope our people accept all these services and don’t vote for any of the dominant parties in the future. As indigenous peoples, we must be proactive to respond to these ‘handed-down’ substandard services to us in the interior. We must also remember that we have the power in our hands to change things. I hope we can learn from our indigenous counterparts in Peru and other Latin American countries to form bottom upward ap-proaches: centered on critical thinking and indigenous empowerment in villages that can trigger active militancy to dialogue and pressure authorities to treat us with dignity and respect, and not sit back and takes things from them for granted.
Sincerely,
Medino Abraham MSc
Grass roots researcher and Empowerment of Indigenous people in Guyana
