Amerindian development: The President and the Toshaos
Guyana’s Amerindian communities will be hoping that President Irfaan Ali’s undertaking that the country’s ‘first people’ and their largely forest-based communities will benefit equally from the returns from the country’s oil and gas industry goes beyond the repetitive political promises, to actually improve the quality of their lives, which, half a century and a bit more after political independence, have gone, overwhelmingly, unfulfilled.
“Let me assure you once again, that you would benefit equally from the resources of oil and gas in your communities, there will be no distinction,” President Ali was quoted as saying on Saturday August 4 at a Region Nine Regional Toshaos meeting.
But Amerindian communities can hardly be blamed if they choose to reach back into recent history and strike a wait and see posture in response to what the President had to say. Such promises which, over time, have lacked anything even remotely resembling sufficiently meaningful follow up action, have become all too familiar inserts into the political pronouncements that are particularly fashionable at election time.
President Ali’s most recent promise to Amerindian communities of “massive transformational development” which will be attended by “an enhanced level of consultation consistent with your vision of indigenous and sustainable development” was made against the backdrop of compelling evidence that the governance process in Guyana has been overwhelmingly neglectful of the interests of Amerindian communities.
The President, like his predecessors, is also offering change. An official release from last Saturday’s engagement reported the President as saying that Region Nine “will become a focal point for hinterland development with resources allocated there for the creation of a vibrant centre for industry and trade and a hotspot for adventure sport and nature-based tourism.”
However well-meaning the President’s undertaking might be, Amerindian communities that have ‘been there before,’ might be inclined to tag this pronouncement as clichéd and overdone.
The President’s encounter with the Toshaos also came with a commitment that the government will move to “strengthen inclusion of Amerindian communities in the broader process of national development”. This objective, the President reportedly said, requires indigenous leaders to position themselves and their communities for greater development.
It is the government, of course, that must help provide the compass to allow for what, in essence, is a considerable integrationist enterprise, which has never been genuinely attempted before.
If assessments of the President’s recent assurances given to Amerindian communities might seem to fit into a familiar more-of-the-same pattern, this time around the government may have at its disposal the material resources to begin that journey.
In his address to the Region Nine Toshaos last week the President made a pointed promise that resource allocation insofar as the country’s petroleum dollars are concerned will be guided by the understanding that oil is a national resource rather than one that will simply be used to create imposing capitals and well-appointed coastal communities.
A sense of genuine intent, therefore, could mark the start of a journey for which posterity could well afford President Ali a generous measure of credit. His effort, if is attended by the requisite political will, probably stands as good a chance as any of ushering in a transformational episode that raises the standard of living across Amerindian communities while setting a precedent for working with them to ensure that the socio-cultural elements of their way of life are not compromised beyond recognition in the process.
What Amerindian communities would be keen to leave behind are the poverty and patronage that they have had to endure over time. Those experiences, in some instances, have left them well adrift of being food secure and lacking in genuine opportunities to improve the quality of their lives. Such opportunities as may exist in the country’s goldmining industry, for example, which, one might argue, ought to belong in large measure to Amerindians, as a matter of right. They have instead, over time, been mostly divvied up amongst coastal fortune seekers. That said, it is Amerindians, largely, who must live with the environmental consequences of a gold-mining industry that has done considerably less than might have been expected to enhance the quality of their lives and their communities.
Over time, astute analysts of hinterland development have shifted little from their position that the historical posture of the coastal central government machinery to Amerindian communities has been underpinned by patronage and double standards. There is nothing that the President said to the Region Nine Toshaos on Saturday that had not, in one form or another, been said before. Inevitably, it is history rather than what he had to say to the Toshaos that will judge him.