Indigenous Peoples’ Heritage

Sep 14, 2012 Editorial

There were expressions of outrage expressed by elements in the mining community at the ongoing exercise, under the auspices of the UNDP, to demarcate the lands of the Indigenous peoples of Guyana. Full-page ads were taken out in the newspapers opposing the requests for extensions to the already identified 14,000 square miles allocated to the nine indigenous tribes. It was claimed that these extensions would confer 30% of Guyana’s territory to a group comprising only 10% of the country’s population.
One pertinent factor that seemed to have been lost in the shuffle in this new concern over Indigenous peoples’ rights is that many of those rights have been enshrined in international treaties to which the state of Guyana is a signatory. In the case of the land issue, on September 10 (Amerindian Heritage Day) we commemorated the day (in 1957) that Stephen Campbell became the first Indigenous peoples’ Member of Parliament.
It was on account of Campbell’s unflagging advocacy, that the Indigenous Peoples right to the land that they occupied became an integral condition under which we were granted independence. The Indigenous peoples can bring a good case in international law if we were to renege on our commitment, thus deny them the right to the land they occupy. It is rather ironic, however, that more than five hundred years after Columbus, there are still individuals who evidently hold the view that the people who occupied the “New World”, did not own it all. Do they still not have all their commensurate rights?
Additionally, there are the international treaties, including those of the UN system. On Sept 13, 2007, Guyana was among 143 UN member states which voted in favour of adopting the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Four countries – the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand voted against. The article that the latter four refused to accept stated that “indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.” Guyana, to its credit, acknowledged at the UN the principle which had been part of its independence package with Britain.
That principle, of course, could potentially put in question most of the land ownership in countries, such as those that opposed the declaration, whose present population is largely descended from settlers who took over territory from previous inhabitants. The Guyanese who published the ads recently seem to be placing themselves in this camp.
The overall declaration, which outlines the rights of the world’s estimated 370 million indigenous people and outlaws discrimination against them, has been in the making for over 22 years, with several drafts written and rewritten. For instance, the declaration sets out the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples. These include their rights to culture, identity, language, employment, health, education and other issues. It emphasizes the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their own institutions, cultures and traditions, and to pursue their development in keeping with their own needs and aspirations. It also prohibits discrimination against indigenous peoples and promotes their full and effective participation in all matters that concern them, and their right to remain distinct and to pursue their own visions of economic and social development.
Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights applies to minorities and recognizes, inter alia, an individual right to enjoy one’s culture in community with other members of the cultural collective. The UN Human Rights Committee has interpreted this article to include the “rights of persons, in community with others, to engage in economic and social activities which are part of the culture of the community to which they belong.”
When crafting the Low Carbon Development Strategy, the government had acknowledged the right of the Indigenous communities to participate or not in the scheme. However, the government also had pledged that indigenous communities would receive US$8 million out of the US$30 million to be received from the Low Carbon Development Strategy revenue, whether they ‘bought in “ or not.

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