Dear Editor,
Your editorial ‘Govt and the Indigenous’ (SN 02 June 2024, https://www.stabroeknews.com/2024/06/02/opinion/editorial/govt-and-the-indigenous/) touches on the remarkably unthinking paternalism displayed by the current government towards Guyana’s diverse 200+ Amerindian Villages and Communities. What genuinely caring government would buy a job lot of 200 identical agricultural tractors and attachments and hand them out without considering the range of needs of different peoples and areas? Why send disc harrows to a community which needs a tractor equipped with a PTO-driven winch and arch for logging? Why send any arable agricultural implements to communities which need towed angle graders and hydraulic tipping trailers to shape and keep the earthen village roads well-drained and pothole-free? Why send any power-driven machinery without tools and spare parts for maintenance? Why not use the facility at Bina Hill in the North Rupununi to run year-round courses on maintenance and repair of tractors and outboard engines and chainsaws? Why not spend money so that every Village and Amerindian Community has a Village Office where administrative files and boundary maps, village tools and spare parts, can be stored securely and accessibly?
Your editorial also mentions the advertisement by the National Toshaos’ Council (NTC) two weeks ago for assistance in Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) consultations with Amerindians. There is already a substantial section on how to apply FPIC in the ‘Guideline for Amerindian Land Titling in Guyana’, developed for the unfinished GRIF-financed Amerindian Land Titling project in April 2017 and accessible at https://www.un-redd.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/FINAL%20Guideline%20for%20ALT%20Guyana_Adopted%2028042017.pdf. This repeated exercise by the NTC carries the scent of a government attempt to force again the Amerindian approval of the government’s theft of the forest-based carbon credits over 2.299 million hectares of forest on Amerindian Titled Lands and the illegal sale of those stolen credits to the Hess Corporation of the USA in December 2021 [see https://www.stabroeknews.com/2023/11/01/opinion/letters/vice-presidents-office-is-yet-again-misleading-the-people-on-carbon-credits/]. Editor, a coastlander holding legal title or a legal contract to land would not allow the government to sell any interest on their property without first obtaining their explicit and written consent. Why it is that Amerindian legal titles to some of their ancestral lands are not equally respected?
Sincerely,
Janette Bulkan
