Contemplating a historic national shame

The National Archives – if they have, in the twenty first century, now been afforded a higher level of official mindfulness than had been the case more than two decades ago - would probably contain quite a few GIS (Government Information Services) publications lionizing ‘our Amerindians,’ saluting them as ‘our first people’ and setting down various envisaged undertakings designed to lift them from the children of the forest nomenclature that sought to describe the traditional manner of their existence.

There had been, as well, a more visible acknowledgement of their belonging. This we did by grafting elements of their culture, onto a broader national tapestry so that National Awards, prominent edifices and occasions have been afforded Amerindian names and titles.

Our schools’ curriculum, too, took on board ‘our Amerindian Heritage’ as part of the country’s broader academic tapestry that sought to acknowledge what were deemed to be important elements in their history.

All of this, it should be noted, was, to a considerable extent, ‘pure politics,’ since, even as Amerindians were being ‘recognized’ through symbolism there had been no overall comparable enhancement of their socio economic circumstances. The official acknowledgement of the indigenous dimension to Guyana’s existence was, in large measure, a political gesture that derived from our political leaders paying attention to a broader global curriculum that was tending increasingly towards the endorsement of the rights of ‘First Peoples’ in other parts of the world.

The real truth is, that there has been no point in time in the history of Guyana when the use of motifs and symbols to acknowledge the Amerindian presence was ever matched by a corresponding effort to remove the children of the forest’ status that had been assigned them. “Amerindian development,” (a title used in the publication of an assortment of booklets and leaflets on Amerindians in Guyana) for the most part, was encrusted in unstated themes that had to do, mostly, with tokenism and ‘catch up.’ The real truth here, however, was that there was never a time in the history of the nation when we were even remotely persuaded that we were heading for a junction at which the ‘gap’ between the quality of life on the coast, on the one hand and the ‘hinterland,’ on the other, would be altogether removed.

Setting aside the seeming absence of any genuine political will, it was, as well, a matter of material resources. Whatever ‘leveling up’ might have been envisaged would have had to be put aside once the material cost had been set before a decidedly impoverished nation. The other issue had to do with whether or not there has ever been

any serious evidence of a genuine intention (political will?) to undertake a real ‘leveling up’ exercise. Here it has to be said the profusion of symbolism that has always attended the notion of ‘Amerindian Development’ has always been unable to conceal the fact that the hinterland regions lag way behind the ‘coastal plain’ insofar as all of the various forms of what we generally describe as “development” are concerned. Here, one might add that whenever any kind of over-arching ‘national development plan’ has been articulated by one political administration or another, the framers of such plans have never failed to make mostly tokenistic allowances for ‘the Amerindians.’ And why not? Have we not noticed from the pattern of behaviour in some developed countries that the contemporary ‘big-ing up’ of indigenous peoples provide a measure of ‘compensation’ for their historic marginalization?

Here in Guyana, It has always been, not just a matter of the state being genuinely accepting of the reality that our ‘Amerindian brothers and sisters’ are altogether entitled to conditions no less favourable than those enjoyed by coastlanders, but that those entitlements must be both embedded and actualized in any overarching national development plan; and whereas arguments to the contrary may be glibly trotted out by the waving around of one or another unfulfilled Amerindian development plan, the reality can only be properly discerned by studiously contemplating the yawning gap between vociferous undertakings, on the other hand, and the glaring actualization deficit, on the other.

The incessant official blowing of the ‘Amerindian Development trumpet’ continues to be effected with a mindfulness of the fact that the rights of indigenous peoples have, over time, metamorphosed from the status of a less than exalted domestic issue to one that is now high on the global agenda, not least, on the agenda of the United Nations. Put differently, we in Guyana are entirely aware that there is a considerable measure of positive international attention to be derived from affording Amerindian rights and entitlements a prominent place on our national agenda. That is, to a considerable extent, why it has survived

as a domestic ‘development issue.’

Here in Guyana we can make the claim that we have done so by embedding the issue of Amerindian rights into a bewildering array of ‘development plans’ some of which, with hindsight, have turned out not even to be worth the paper they were printed on. Put differently, they have been ‘non-starters.’

If it is true, for example, that the overall wealth of the country, up to this time, has never really been sufficient to, simultaneously, raise all of the communities across the country to an equally exalted level, the fact is that the resources to which Amerindian communities ought to have at least equal access, have been gourmandized by our coastal wealth-seekers, a propensity which, historically, those who rule, have done nothing of any real consequence to curb.

Whatever arguments we may make to the contrary, the altogether avoidable Mahdia tragedy – and we should not even think of setting aside the fact that the tragedy was avoidable – is, in a very real sense, attributable to a protracted official neglect of the Amerindian people and their communities. Whether we accept it or not, there exists a historical linkage between the manner in which we have perceived and treated our indigenous communities and the recent enormous tragedy. In a very real sense it has its roots in the historical downgrading of the substantive interests of Amerindians and their communities.

Perhaps worse, coastal political administrations have sought to gloss over the patronage that has been afforded our ‘first people’ by a profusion of tokenistic gestures which, when all is said and done, have done nothing to bring them their legitimate rights and entitlements. That, truth be told, amounts to a historic national shame.