The Pioneering Days of Stephen Campbell

Jan 24, 2016 Countryman, Features / Columnists

By Dennis Nichols
This week I’m back once more in the North West region of Guyana, to source another of our country’s great

Dennis Nichols

sons who ought to be remembered and homaged during the year’s independence golden jubilee. Not as renowned or as studied as last week’s H.N. Critchlow, he is nevertheless worthy of honour by virtue of being an indigenous people’s icon, and political pioneer. He is Stephen Campbell, Guyana’s first Amerindian Member of Parliament and resolute advocate for the rights of all indigenous peoples.
This article also seeks to enlighten mostly our youths about a man whose achievements are rarely highlighted, apart from during the annual Amerindian Heritage Day activities, which in any case appear to be dominated by revelry, despite the accompanying lectures on his achievements and place in Guyanese history.
As significant moments in Campbell’s early life may be clouded by time or simply unrecorded, I will use literary license to recreate some of them through inference. To this end, having spent eight years living and teaching among Amerindians in the North West should assist me. Furthermore, I have been privy to some aspects of our first peoples’ way of life denied to many coastlanders, who see the masks of a culture they either do not understand or have little desire to.
Stephen Joseph Campbell, of Arawak (Lokono) and Portuguese descent, was born just as the 19th century was coming to a close, on Boxing Day 1897, to Tiburtio Campbell and Maria dos Santos, in Moruka, North West District. It was a time when, historians note, attempts at reform in the colonial Court of Policy were made, along with the introduction of the secret ballot at the 1897 general elections – two developments that may have helped shape his political thinking later on.
We can imagine young Stephen playing in forest clearings, swimming or corialing in tannin-darkened creeks, or learning to play the violin and accordion, maybe under the tutelage of a Catholic priest. Having lost both parents at an early age, he would’ve been too young to remember watching his father shape a boat frame, or being slung across his mother’s torso as she sifted cassava ‘mealie’. Later he would be ground in ‘religion and discipline’ by his grandmother who raised him after his parents’ death.
At the Santa Rosa Mission School, we see a barefooted Stephen with slate and pencil faithfully copying chalkboard instruction while trying to reconcile English grammar with his native tongue. But we have to skip a fairly large chunk of time as apparently not much more is known about his childhood and teenage years.

Stephen Campbell with a petition presented at the London Constitutional Conference.

So let’s jump to 1917 when, according to Aubrey Collins in ‘The Achievements of Stephen Campbell’ he prospected for bauxite, before travelling to the village of Sawariwau in the Rupununi to work as a teacher/catechist among the Wapisianas. He also founded the first school there.
Next it was on to Siriki, Pomeroon, where he continued catechism teaching as part of the church’s effort to convert residents to Christianity. And it was almost certainly there that Stephen met and married an attractive young woman named Umbelita da Silva, a coffee planter’s daughter, after which he himself made a living off that industry. The union produced eight children, at least two of whom, David Campbell and Stephanie Correia, gained national and international artistic prominence.
After spending 17 years on the Pomeroon, Campbell travelled extensively across the country, from Barima-Waini through Cuyuni-Mazaruni and on to the Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo region. In addition to farming, he engaged in logging and sawmilling, road construction, gold mining, fishing and rubber-tapping. He also taught for two years at a school on the Aruka River.
In 1957, Stephen Campbell made his big move. He entered politics, his interest having been stirred by the need for Amerindians to have their interests represented at the highest levels of government. Following general elections that year, the first in which Amerindians were able to vote, Campbell, representing the National Labour Front, (NLF) won a seat on the Legislative Council, and on September 10th of that year, became the Guyana’s first Amerindian Member of Parliament, for the North West constituency.
At 60, some thought he was too old to effectively represent his people. But Campbell was not one to be easily swayed by the opinions of others. Working mostly behind the scenes, (Collins implies that he realized he could achieve little by merely bringing motions before the House) he found he could actually get things done by more practical efforts.
For example, he took the Superintendent of Pure Water Supplies to Hosororo to see how people there were suffering, having to fetch river water uphill, before a pump could be installed to alleviate the situation. He also used this method, along with a petition signed by North West farmers, to get the Ministry of Communications and Works to build water tanks for their convenience at the Kumaka and Morawhanna stellings, where they brought their produce on a weekly basis.
Other initiatives undertaken in similar fashion included his goal of developing the ‘5C’ industries – citrus, coffee, cocoa, coconuts and cattle, building a 22-mile road from Kwebana to Moruka to facilitate a land-development scheme, and soliciting funds for another – the Wauna-Yarakita agricultural project. To this end he spoke with, and challenged the commitment of, Communications and Works Minister, Ram Karran, Natural Resources Minister, Edward Beharry, and even then premier, Cheddi Jagan.
Amerindians from all over the country, including village leaders, often bypassed government officials to speak with Campbell directly. In 1958, he pursued increased remuneration (from $10 a month) for Amerindian captains, arguing that it was ‘not good enough … for anyone in British Guiana’. His stoutest pursuit, however, was the defence of Amerindian rights, especially land, particularly with independence looming and the fear that such rights would be ignored. (Presumably by the new PPP ‘communist’ government) Amerindians feared lands would be expropriated once British protection was withdrawn.
In 1962, Campbell prepared a petition signed by 26 Amerindian chiefs ‘beautifully inscribed on a scroll’ laying out these fears, and presented it at the British Guiana Constitutional Conference in London to then Secretary of State for the Colonies, Duncan Sandys. The next year Campbell and United Force leader Peter D’Aguiar made another visit to Sandys for the same purpose, but there was not a positive enough response to either visit. Our ‘boy’ didn’t give up.
He and D’Aguiar turned to a group of British lawyers who proposed that a series of steps be taken to deal with the problem, including the establishment of semi-reserves, fixed boundaries, and preservation of the right of appeal to the Privy Council concerning Amerindian rights for at least 10 years after independence. On their return to Guyana, steps were taken to advance these measures, and in 1964, the Amerindian Association of Guyana was formed, with Campbell as its first president.
With Guyana in a state of political and racial turmoil in 1964, Campbell led a delegation from the association to the colonial governor, in an effort to prevent coastland violence from reaching hinterland locations. He also pressed the governor to establish an impartial commission to tackle the matter of land rights, which eventually led to the Amerindian Act, and included land titling. That same year he tried to get a 10% duty on the importation of balata into the U.K. removed, to prevent endangerment to the livelihood of Amerindians in the Rupununi.
After being re-elected to the House of Assembly in 1964, Campbell was made Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs with special responsibility for Amerindian affairs. Not much is recorded about his last year and a half in office, but we can reasonably assume that he continued championing the rights of indigenous people throughout the country. He died on May 12th 1966, two weeks short of independence.
Incidentally, Stephen Campbell and I share something in common – the last school at which he taught, St. Dominic’s on the Aruka River, was the first school at which I taught, 19 years after. I claim no other professional association. But I do hope that from now on, and not only in September, his name will resonate with ringing clarity as his achievements and aspirations are shared and cherished.