Indigenous people waiting 21 years for High Court decision on land title dispute - APA report

Indigenous people waiting 21 years for High Court decision on land title dispute – APA report

Sep 02, 2019 News

October 2019 will mark 21 years since several Indigenous communities of the Upper Mazaruni area of Region Seven filed a case with the Judiciary, seeking collective title over their customary lands.
This issue was given a spotlight at last Thursday’s meeting of the Amerindian People’s Association (APA) at the Regency Hotel, Hadfield Street, in Georgetown.
Attendees included Minister of Indigenous People’s Affairs, Sidney Allicock, and stakeholders from several partner organizations of the APA.
During the meeting, the APA launched a report titled Ina Nono, Ina Uko’manto’ Eina Pata, Eina Komantok, or Our Land, Our Life on the land tenure situation of Region seven’s Indigenous communities.
The report stated that “Joint requests for collective land title have been ignored. Specifically, the Upper Mazaruni communities’ request for collective title during the 1960s ALC [Amerindian Lands Commission] process was ignored, and the communities’ lawsuit seeking collective title has been pending a decision in the High Court for more than 20 years since it was filed in 1998.”
In 1967, Government instituted an Amerindian Lands Commission, tasked with mapping and suggesting titles to be issued to Indigenous communities.

Upper Mazaruni 1959 District Boundary and territorial claim in court [Source: ‘Our Land, Our Life’ land tenure report]

In 1991, title was granted individually to each community, though they requested holding collective title to their traditional territory. The Villages of Paruima, Waramadong, Kamarang (Warawatta), Kako, Jawalla and Phillipai in the Upper Mazaruni have long sought legal title over the area defined by the 1959 Amerindian District as one Akawaio/Arecuna district.
Being dissatisfied that their wishes weren’t granted, the Arecuna and Akawaio people brought a landmark case to court for those lands.
In 2008, when they appeared in court again; the issue was adjourned. When they met in 2012 and the community brought forth an anthropologist to provide expert evidence on their claims to their ancestral lands; the government’s defence team disqualified her as a witness and caused the matter to be adjourned once again. Fast forward to 2017, the government filed a submission in defence of its claim.
Recommendations of the APA on this issue, detailed in a 2014 report from the APA and the Forest People’s Programme (FPP), titled Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, Forests and Climate Policies in Guyana”, were that the mineral rights issued to third parties on customary lands without community consent be annulled, and that the lands be reinstituted to the full control of the Akawaios and Arecunas. It also recommended urgent reform of relevant policies and legislation to protect the land rights of the Indigenous peoples in the Upper Mazaruni, and throughout Guyana.
The report had stated that there is a proliferation of roads and destructive mining across the region, generating resource conflicts, water pollution, environmental damage, deforestation and social harm.
When Kaieteur News spoke with Minister Allicock last Thursday, he said that when the current Government assumed office in 2015, it sought to engage the Upper Mazaruni district to, perhaps, allay their frustrations without having to wait on the decision of the Court. But those consultations proved unfruitful, and the communities indicated that they will wait on the decision of the Court.
Upper Mazaruni District Council Chairman and former APA President, Mario Hastings, had expressed distrust in Government over its willingness to grant the communities collective title, telling Kaieteur News that though the Judiciary should be independent, politics still has its influence.
He has contended that Government, in the way it went about issuing the titles, placed profits gleaned from mining over the interests of Indigenous people’s rights to traditional and ancestral lands.
“They are looking at investment and we have been told that mining brings a lot of money to the country – they keep saying that – but the health of the people is at stake.” Hastings had said, describing Government’s actions to address these issues as “wholly inadequate or absent”.
The communities of the Cuyuni Mazaruni region, in Our Land, Our Life, called on the Chancellor of the Judiciary to expedite a decision in the Upper Mazaruni court case, and for the National Toshaos Council (NTC) to express its unequivocal support for the case.
It also urged village councils to take stronger stances regarding their land issues, including by following the example of the Upper Mazaruni and taking the Government to Court.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News