What may lie in store for our Indigenous communities

Reference is made to your Business Editorial, of December 17, 2021, titled, ‘Our marginalized hinterland communities.’ There are two comments I wish to direct towards the editorial’s contents. The first concerns the editorial’s suggestion of a lack of inclusion of Indigenous communities within the country’s nascent oil and gas economy, and, accordingly, “what lies in store” for our Indigenous communities. Editor, as a reference marker, perhaps the Stabroek Business could research and present the following: the value of the extractive industries from post-Independence to now from the ‘hinterland regions,’ whose populations are dominated by the Indigenous Peoples, and what benefits/returns were repatriated to those regions. This may inform the curious amongst us of the possible direction of what may “lie in store” for our Indigenous communities.

My second comment addresses the editorial in its totality—all it does is repeat what is already known under the sun. Perhaps the author could have presented a comparative definition of ‘development’ as measured by both western and nonwestern philosophies, thereby assisting us, both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to appreciate how it was possible for a modern post-Independent nation to sustain the institutionalisation of hinterland/ Indigenous underdevelopment so successfully.

Sincerely,

Rohan Sagar