APA completes training sessions on the revision process of the Amerindian Act 2006

Jul 22, 2018 News

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The Amerindian Peoples Association (APA) supported training sessions on the revision process of Amerindian Act 2006 this month, with three meetings already completed in the villages of Santa Rosa, Region One; Kako, Region Seven; and Kopinang, Region Eight.
These sessions are to build capacity in reading and analyzing the 2006 legislation in order that communities make their own recommendations on strengthening the Act. These training sessions are spearheaded by the Steering Committee for the Revision of the 2006 Amerindian Act, comprising the APA, the National Toshaos Council (NTC), the Amerindian Action Movement of Guyana (TAAMOG), the Guyanese Organization of Indigenous Peoples (GOIP) and the National Amerindian Development Foundation (NADF) as well as representatives from the various indigenous villages and district councils.
The APA collaborated with the Moruca District Council (Region One), Upper Mazaruni District Council (Region Seven) and North Pakaraimas District Council (Region Eight) to conduct these sessions with the help of facilitators from each region who are trained to understand the current Act as well as international and Constitutional human rights guarantees.
Once sessions are completed, villages will make their own recommendations on the revision of the Act. These are expected to be submitted in written form to the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples Affairs.
The Committee’s plan is to ensure that as many Indigenous Villages and communities, as possible, through collaboration with their District Councils, are prepared to make recommendations that are informed by actual knowledge of what the current Act says and what their rights are under international law and the Constitution.
The APA recently completed a series of such training sessions at the Moruca District Council Meeting (June 30 – July 2), Kopinang Village (July 5 – 7) and Upper Mazaruni District Council (July 9 – 12).
The Kopinang training included six villages of the North Pakaraimas sub-district and was the second session hosted by the APA. This session facilitated discussions on the Act as it relates to human rights, national law, village governance, land tenure and other relevant topics to the country’s indigenous peoples.
The Toshaos, councillors, and residents present at the meeting made clear that securing the right to land tenure and the effectiveness of the land titling process continue to be areas of high priority and should be addressed when revising the 2006 legislation.
The meeting familiarised Toshaos and villagers with the 2006 Act, especially as it relates to international human rights law and indigenous peoples’ rights, including the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) and self-determination and autonomy, as well as the Constitution.
Initially, the consultation in Kopinang was planned as part of the North Pakaraimas District Council Meeting, which would have gathered the 17 villages of the sub-district in the village. However, due to bad weather conditions said meeting had to be postponed at the last minute.
Despite these unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances, the APA managed to effectively bring together representatives from Kopinang, Karisparu, Kaibarupai, Kamana, Waipa and Maikwak to join in on discussions about the Act and will work to ensure the other villages in the NPDC will receive similar training.
Many of those present in Kopinang expressed impassioned stories about the importance of their lands, leading the facilitators to conduct exercises to ask the participants how they felt about the current Act failed to protect their rights to their lands and how they might want to see the Act revised.
Newly electedToshao of Kamana, Bonita Xavier, said that land titling and Amerindian culture were the most important aspects of the meeting to her. She said that land remains an important topic for indigenous peoples because they are still not recognised as the people of their land.
“Land is important because from the beginning this was where Amerindian people lived,” shared Xavier.
The degree to which land is important to indigenous peoples of the region was reflected in a recently published APA study entitled Our Land, Our Life: the Land: A Participatory Assessment of the Land Tenure Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Guyana Report for Region Eight.
The study found that of the 17 villages of the sub-district, 16 of them were in favour of a collective territorial block that recognizes both titled and customary lands of the Patamona and Macushi peoples who have historically occupied the region.
The single territorial block was a topic of repeated interest for those at the meeting, as many persons felt that separate demarcated villages contributed to more conflicts rather than resolutions as it related to the sharing of forest resources, collective ownership, use of hunting and fishing grounds.
Toshaos and villages will be given time to compile their recommendations for the improved Act. After these recommendations are completed and approved by the villages, they will be collected by their respective District Councils.
Following their collection, these recommendations will be analysed by legal experts who will translate their recommendations into legal language that will be incorporated into a final report that will be used as a lobbying tool during the Act’s revisions process.
Support for the revision process comes from a larger APA project, Protecting Forests through Protecting Right in Guyana. This project was embarked upon with funding from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) through a partnership with the Rainforest Foundation US and the Forest Peoples Programme UK in 2016.

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