Dear Editor,
The letter by Ian Edwards ‘Indigenous man’, (21st April), raises interesting points. It would indeed be good if Amerindian peoples went to court for a legal declaration confirming they own the carbon services of their forests. Mr. Edwards referred to Stephen Campbell as the “father of the Indigenous people in Guyana” who “fought very hard to get our lands recognised”. Mr. Campbell is one of Guyana’s heroes. His election as a Member of Parliament for the United Force in the 1950’s is historic. It says much for him and for our country. But Mr. Campbell did not call himself ‘indigenous’. He was true to his origins. He called himself a Spanish Arawak from Moruka.
The Counter-Case of the Government of Her Britannic Majesty in the 1899 British Guiana Boundary Arbitration with the United States of Venezuela adduces legal evidence that Spanish Arawaks from the Orinoco migrated to Moruka in 1817. (As we all know the 1899 boundary arbitration resulted in a final binding award until the APNU + AFC coalition decided to go to the International Court of Justice and ask if the award was final and binding.) British attempts to stop the Arawak migration to Guyana failed. In 1834 the Governor issued a grant of land on the Moruka River. The Counter-Case says, “The fact that these Indians were by this grant fixed to a special spot, where they have since resided and have generally married only among their own community, has resulted in their retaining to the present day the use of the Spanish language, together with Arawak.”
The land rights of the people of Moruka began with that 1834 government grant. Indigenous land rights can only be held by peoples who inhabited a country before colonisation. That clearly excludes other peoples who migrated to Guyana after colonisation, for example, the Wapichan who came towards the end of the eighteenth century and the Arecuna who came in the twentieth century. At the British Guiana Independence Conference, Mr. Campbell made no attempt to claim indigenous land rights, which would have excluded Moruka, the Arecuna, the Wapichan and others. Annex C ‘Amerindians’ of the Report of the British Guiana Independence Conference 1965, says that the government will grant “legal ownership or rights of occupancy” over areas and reservations where ‘any tribe or community’ was settled.
Guyana has been identifying Amerindian lands since the 1960’s and issuing land grants. Every one of Guyana’s Amerindian peoples has accepted land grants from the State. Obviously that means they also accepted that the State owned the land or it could not make the grant. That eliminates any surviving argument about ‘indigenous land rights’. A court case must be consistent with historical evidence; it must also be based on law. The legal ownership of land including the forests was transferred to Amerindian communities via State grants. Under the Amerindian Act 2006 that ownership includes the carbon services of the forests and is protected forever.
Sincerely,
Melinda Janki