Reviewing Maroon arguments
PRIME Minister Holness is correct on this point: Jamaica is a unitary State and there is no independent State of Accompong.
The Maroons do not have sovereignty over Accompong; nor is it helpful to refer to Accompong as a sovereign State. The matter needs to be addressed in unequivocal terms to avoid uncertainty. Clarity is essential.
CONSTITUTIONAL SUPREMACY
The Jamaican Constitution, the document setting out the fundamental rules for the Jamaican State, makes no provision for a Maroon State within a State. This silence is not accidental. Jamaica, as a unitary State, has in place one system of laws, one system for the promulgation of laws, and one system for the execution of laws.
On particular matters, rules concerning Maroons may differ from rules applicable to other Jamaicans, but if so, the departure from the laws applicable to all Jamaicans would need to be ordained ultimately by the Jamaican Constitution. Sovereignty over Jamaica is derived from the constitution and derogations from the constitution must be consistent with the terms of the constitution itself.
Notwithstanding, the principle of constitutional supremacy, some persons have suggested that Maroons have sovereignty over Accompong because of the 1739 Treaty between Guthrie (for the British) and Cudjoe (for the Maroons). Last week I sought to demonstrate that this line of argument is incorrect.
For one thing, the treaty, by its own terms, did not establish Maroon sovereignty over any part of Jamaica. For another, subsequent actions by the British colonial authorities and the independent Jamaican State did not contemplate a sovereign Maroon State established by the treaty. Nor did the nomenclature of the word “treaty” mean that the British and the Maroons completed their agreement as sovereign states.
UN DECLARATION
In response to the Pprime minister’s sharp refutation of the Maroon sovereignty claim last Sunday, Chief Currie of Accompong has asserted that the Maroons build their case on the United Nations (UN) Declaration on Indigenous Peoples. Others, including some distinguished scholars, have supported the chief on this point.
The UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples is a resolution of the UN General Assembly passed in 2007 (A/RES/61/295) where 144 States voted for the resolution (including Jamaica), while four voted against (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA) and 11 abstained. Since 2007, the dissentient states have reportedly given their support to this resolution.
As its name implies, the resolution recognises and seeks to protect the interests of indigenous peoples in different parts of the world. Presumably, Chief Currie’s main argument is that the UN Declaration affirms Maroon sovereignty and creates binding obligations on the Jamaican State. This approach is problematic for several reasons.
In the first place, the idea that the resolution addresses Maroon issues is readily open to challenge. The resolution does not define indigenous peoples and, on the conventional view of our history, the Maroons are not indigenous people. For the Caribbean and the Americas, the term “indigenous peoples” has traditionally been understood to refer to groups existing in the so-called New World prior to the arrival of Columbus and the Europeans. These groups include, among others, the Tainos, Kalinagos, Mayans, Incas and Aztecs.
Maroons have not historically been regarded as falling within this category because they were originally persons transported – in horrific conditions – from Africa to the Caribbean and other places. They were not indigenous.
In recent times, attempts have been made to overcome this definitional reality. Some historians argue that Maroons are to be regarded as indigenous because they mixed with the indigenous Tainos and thus assumed standing as indigenous people. This claim is of doubtful validity as a matter of fact.
ILO CONVENTIONS
Another attempt to place Maroons in the
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“INDIGENOUS PEOPLES”