Pressures on the Indigenous

Sep 19, 2010 Editorial

In this month when the nation is commemorating “Heritage Month”, two reports in the local press were especially disheartening. They concern the fate of two indigenous females, one of whom had moved from the interior to the coastland. Neither incident suggested that the young women were trafficked from their homes but it suggests, as we have proposed in the past, that the plight of Indigenous women on the coast might be just as depressing as if they were.
In one particular gruesome incident, a teenage mother from Lethem had evidently brought her newborn baby to the coast for medical treatment of a congenital condition. She ended up in the Parika area and struck up a relationship with a local, who ironically, left for the interior to earn enough money to pay for the medical intervention.
The young mother gravitated to the fast life, moved out of the home of her new partner to a veritable shack in a nearby squatting area. The eight-month sick baby had to have been a strain and it appears that after one prolonged bout of the baby’s wailing, the mother snapped. She confessed that she strangled the child and dumped her into the backyard pit latrine.
In the other, more typical case, an indigenous young woman of twenty, the mother of a six-month-old son, was hired by a Georgetown business family to perform, as they say, “housework”. The son was left with his grandmother in “the Mahaicony area”. From the reports, the employers admitted that for $20,000 monthly, the young woman had to work from 6:30 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon.
The girl’s contention that she had to work into the night rings true since it would be expected that she would have to serve dinner and wash up afterward. And so for the claim that she had to work every day: the employer indignantly asserted that after all, they “had to eat”. The maid’s salary would then work out to around $700 for a twelve-hour day.
What is especially troubling were the indications of sexual harassment to which the young lady was subjected. The male employer admitted paying $1500 to have her “rub his leg” while he was in shorts – and never informing his wife who was out at the time. He denied coercing her to watch “porn” with him.
With her child falling ill, it is easier to believe the young lady’s assertion that she was forced to remain until a new servant (a better term than “maid) was found than the counterclaim that she volunteered to stay. Then there were racial stereotypes expressed by the employers that underscore the point we wish to make.
As our interior becomes increasingly developed and integrated into the coastal economy, we have witnessed a huge migration of young indigenous women to the coast. They have become employed preponderantly in two areas: as servants and as “bar girls” in rum shops across the coast. In each of these jobs, they are exploited mercilessly.
As generally single mothers, their lot in the poverty sweepstakes have hardly improved and the stereotypes become even more ingrained.
This is not the time to make fine academic distinctions about what is “voluntary” and what is “coerced” behaviour. This pattern of abuse of Indigenous women invariably begins when they are in their teens. The Ministry of Human Services, in collaboration with the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs, have to become much more pro-active to deal with this exploitation – and this is what it amounts to, under the kindest of interpretations.
Indigenous NGO’s will have to play a key intermediary role if we are to have any success with the programmes. We are dealing with very sensitive subjects – cultural mores and values, women’s rights, freedom of choice and “development” etc. – that need to be addressed from within the Indigenous communities.
We suggest that some of the funds that will be directed to the Indigenous Peoples from the LCDS, be deployed to develop an infrastructure that can facilitate our Indigenous quest for a sustainable life – free of exploitation.

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