With its mind firmly fixed on both the domestic and international dimensions of the manner in which it attends to the welfare of the country’s indigenous communities, the Government of Guyana has sculpted a public information space on which it dishes out a fairly constant stream of missives about its treatment of Amerindian communities. It is a policy/strategy that reflects its awareness on both the local and global sensitivity regarding the rights of indigenous peoples and the extent to which countries, these days, can attract a generous measure of international attention for seemingly being indifferent to the welfare of their indigenous peoples.
These days, how countries are perceived, globally, in terms of the extent of their commitment to the rights of indigenous peoples is not a matter that is lost to the sensitivity of the Government of Guyana so that Amerindian Affairs has become not just a mainstream domestic policy issue but a foreign policy one, as well. It is this, to a large extent, that informs the issuance of frequent official missives, documenting one or another official contribution to Amerindian development. Of course, no one can blame a government whose coffers, these days, are chock-a-block with oil money from investing in a modicum of image enhancement by making the point as vigorously as it can that some of those monies are being channeled in the direction of ensuring that Amerindians are being positioned to play ‘catch up’, insofar as their overall development is concerned. And why not? After all, the image of the well-being of indigenous peoples is embedded in the governance outlook of several of the world’s wealthiest, most recognizable countries.
To say that the May 2023 Mahdia Dormitory fire, that took the lives of 20 children, threw a proverbial spanner in the works insofar as public perception of the state’s treatment of Amerindians is concerned is to indulge in considerable understatement. Such contriteness, as might have been forthcoming from officialdom in the matter of what, unquestionably, was a national tragedy was almost certainly compromised by the intransigence of the state on the particular issue of culpability.
Here, it is not inconceivable that the state may have seen the just concluded National Toshaos’ Conference as a means by which to put the Mahdia conflagration behind it. If, indeed that was the intention, it did not appear to work. Arguably, the deliberations and outcomes of the recent National Toshaos’ Conference may well have been seen as an extension of that wider process of strengthening government/ Amerindian relations, and perhaps, may even have helped to provide clues to the conviviality, or otherwise, of those relations between the state and the overall Amerindian community. Contextually, the political administration would have wanted to parade its credentials in terms of the contribution that it continues to make to Amerindian development. The government might have hoped, too, that it would hear, from the Toshaos’ side, on the matter of the extent to which Amerindian communities continue to benefit from various state initiatives in the light of what, these days, is government’s significantly enhanced material ability to raise its game as far as making resources available is concerned. This would have served to burnish both its local and international credentials.
In fairness, the point should be made that there is a distinct dimension of parochial politics that is hinged to Amerindian development. Over the years, groups of Amerindians have made their own choices as far as their political affiliations are concerned, and this has had the effect of causing Amerindian priorities/concerns to move much closer to the centre of the political mainstream. In the circumstances where the flow of reliable socio-political information is constrained by logistical considerations, the reliability of the information coming from the hinterland is likely to be questioned. While the government is well positioned to use the various communications tools at its disposal to secure a considerable edge in painting its own picture of ‘Amerindian development’, in the era of the digital realm and social media platforms, credible verification may not be a challenge. Beyond that, the planning of Toshaos’ Conferences and other fora that have to do with Amerindian development are managed, by and large, by state institutions so that the agendas and outcomes can be pleasing to them.