BELIZE CITY – The Caribbean’s indigenous people have urged that they be given a seat at the political table so as to safeguard their rights to their ancestral lands and resources, as they wrapped up an historic University of the West Indies conference of indigenous peoples here over the Labour Day weekend.
The call for political representation for the minority first peoples of the region is one of a slew of recommendations on health, education, gender, sustainable livelihoods, land rights and access to justice, drafted after three days of deliberations by the leaders and representatives of indigenous peoples from six CARICOM nations. Host country Belize is home to more than 50,000 Maya and Garifuna peoples, roughly one-tenth of the population.
The conference, organised by UWI IMPACT Justice, a Canadian-funded project to improve access to justice in the Caribbean, has been hailed as a rare, unique and historic gathering of the region’s indigenous peoples and a recognition of the need to redress centuries of degradation and discrimination.
“The Indigenous People should have a seat at the table,” Louis Patrick Hill, a representative of Dominica’s Kalinago chief, who is a former senator in the US Virgin Islands legislature. “They have very little representation at the levels of government because of the political party system that exists in most of the Caribbean and Latin American countries, and because the indigenous peoples are a minority in those countries we find that the political representation is almost not there.”
“There are sometimes (indigenous) people who serve governments but they do not always represent the interests of the indigenous people. It is often-times that they represent the interests of the political party rather that the interests of the indigenous people of their communities. So we want to highly recommend that a process be put in place that allows for audacious representation and not all party politician representation.”
The conference proposed that New Zealand’s model of representation for its indigenous Māori people, which reserves seats for representatives of Māori in parliament. Each electoral district is covered by both a general and a Māori electorate.
“It is something that the governments in the region could study to see how indigenous peoples acquire and achieve true representation in the development progress so their voices are heard, that their issues are always front and centre and they have ability to actually make a case for the issues that confront them,” Hill continued.
Beyond direct political representation, the conference also called for a formal consultative process which gives voice to indigenous peoples’ rights and concerns in the clash with governments over exploitation of their lands.
“We highly recommend… a very extensive, formal, consultation with the peoples who are being affected and for whom solutions are being proposed,” said Laura George of Guyana’s Amerindian Peoples Association.
At the level of international law, there was a call for CARICOM governments to ratify Article 169 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), considered the most important international law guaranteeing the rights of indigenous peoples. The 1989 convention depends on a high number of states ratifying it to give it greater power. So far, only a score of nations worldwide have adopted the convention.
Dominica, which ratified the convention in 2002 is to date the only CARICOM member state to do so.
George also urged the Indigenous People to examine the existing commitments made by CARICOM member states in the regional and international treaties they have ratified, including the Revised CARICOM Treaty and the Convention on Biodiversity as they affect indigenous peoples’ rights.
“Member States have signed on to the Sustainable Development Goals. It might be very broad but I think it’s very key … to truly work towards identifying the challenges of indigenous peoples’ rights… to their resources and the lands and the waters, and to hold governments accountable as a unified body of indigenous peoples.”
“This forum has truly created a space where we could work and come together and work towards our indigenous peoples’ civil society to really push for government and the states to work to protect and define, to respect indigenous peoples’ rights to (their) lands and resources.”
George said the notion of pre-informed consent and consultation with the indigenous peoples’ communities, a concept adopted by Guyana’s newly formed Hinterland and Indigenous Peoples Commission, has not yet been identified at the CARICOM level as the “way to go”.
One of the working groups formed during the conference to make recommendations for follow-up action on social policy also identified a litany of setbacks, deprivations and discrimination that has led to a further marginalisation of indigenous people.
It cited a loss of oral history, the absence of a written history and an education system marked either by limited access or irrelevance to indigenous people.
“Make education programmes relevant to the needs of indigenous peoples,” said Belizean Garifuna Alexandra Seale, a founding leader of the Divine Feminine Circle of Indigenous Elders. “(There is) the need for more research and the need to teach the languages of the indigenous (peoples) and also to protect the archaeology and findings of ancestral remains.”
The conference recommended that proposals be addressed directly to the CARICOM Council of Ministers of Education for an improved curriculum.
“The best way to shortcut (to) the changes in education is go through the Caribbean Examinations Council, and I think this is something that we should all try to do,” Seale, one of the working group presenters, added.
Cristina Coc of the Toledo Alcades Association, a group of Mayan traditional leaders in southern Belize, made an emotional appeal for recognition and respect for the first peoples of the region.
“The Mayan people developed high rises. Our cities had high rises but they were taught to us as ruins, not temples, as our ancestors had them,” said Coc.
“It is important that we rethink the way we conceptualise the very notions that we’ve deliberated on for the last two and a half days; that we celebrate ourselves as opposed to separate and condemn our own civilisations, and we start that process by speaking our truth,” she added.
The UWI conference was notable for the participation of two justices of the Caribbean Court of Justice, Adrian Saunders and Jacob Witt. Last year, the CCJ upheld the land rights of the Mayans of southern Belize.
The meeting was also attended by the highest ranking Amerindian in the Guyana government, Vice President Sydney Allicock, along with Attorney General Basil Williams and Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs Minister Valerie Garrido-Lowe. They were joined by a host of academics and experts in law, environmental conservation and geographical information technology from the Caribbean, Canada and the United States.
As the conference opened Wednesday, Justice Saunders suggested that obtaining justice, not government programmes, was the best route to improving the lives of the region’s indigenous peoples. Amounting to roughly ten per cent of the populations in Belize, Guyana, Suriname, Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago, they have been beset by centuries of exclusion, denial, discrimination and disproportionately high poverty rates.
They include a host of Amerindian nations in Guyana and Suriname, the Kalinago of Dominica, and Carib communities in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Southern Belize is home to around 50,000 Mayans and Garifuna, a mixed race group of Caribs and Africans who were driven from their Vincentian homelands in 1797 by the colonising British and exiled in Belize.
This could be much ado about nothing. In Dominica they have MP representation in Parliament. It should be outlined, what are their interests and what are they seeking.
I think they have come a long way. They were able to change their name from Carib to the formality, Kalinago. Is this not giving them a right? To those of us who knew them as Caribs, they will always be Caribs.
They want to be a nation within the nation of Dominica. This should never happen.
These people have never assimilated in the Dominican society. They are recognized as natives, indigenous people. They really have no wish to do so. They also have prejudices toward their own, as the women. Will they be willing to let go of this custom?
Therefore, what exactly do they want and are looking for. Is anyone bothering them and taking away their rights as also their property?
Inform them to lay out what exactly are their interests and future ones and what do they wish to preserve in Dominica.
i fully support this move by the regions first inhabitants. Europeans have destroyed their home since Columbus showed up and this is what they have been left with. To be treated as second class citizens even here in Dominica. We have no respect for the indigenous. we make fun of them and have all kinds of stereotypes about them and even impressed them our own name for them, on them for centuries. As a Batah! i full support this move as they have more rights in the region as blacks or whites and should be given a status of Sovereigns as the colonial laws of the land should never have applied to them, but if so…GIVE THEM A SEAT or 2 AT THE TABLE to determine their destiny as first class citizens! Every Kalinago should first of all be given a passport free of charge to travel the region freely and openly.
I personally agree with this request.
We have many native or aboriginal people across Canada living on their own Reservations, and others who live in villages, towns, cities, and rural areas where there is a mixed population. They are in our Federal and Provincial governments and have a voice in their own affairs.
Yes, they should have a ”seat at the table” in the government of their nations in the Caribbean, and be treated as equals. It works in Canada and it would work in the Caribbean Nations. The respect we give to other people is the respect that comes back to us.
My wife Sarah is a card carrying member of a Native Band (Tribe) in Canada. As an evangelist I travel across Canada conducting evangelistic crusades. I don’t hesitate to make Sarah’s ancestry known on or off the Reservations.
Sincerely, Rev. Donald Hill. Evangelist.
lol I dont know why they still allowing you people to continue to brainwash them with your white man’s religion. Unfortunately many of the tribes have accepted christianity as their religion, but some of the newer generations are waking up and realizing that religion, especially christianity was a supressive tool used by the whites to control them. they are going back to their native ways of worshiping the earth and the land and the ancestral spirits. Good for them i say. Religion has done more harm than good in the western world in the name of a so called savior. Only to control the minds and resources of the less powerful.
The FOOLl says in his heart there is no God !
smh, I agree with you 100%. The indigenous peoples of the world and also most of our African ancestors have been brain-washed by these Europeans and have adopted their white jesus, and their religions and as a result have forgotten their spirituality. These have created confusion, fear and chaos in our lives.
We must return to the ways of our ancestors and find ourselves again. If we don’t, we will continue on the path of destruction.
UNAPOLOGETIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What you state is foolishness, generated from Satan, the jaws of Hell.
You have not considered that they did not accept Our Lord Jesus Christ, just as the Muslims, Hindus, agnostics and atheists.
There is only one God. He created the world, human beings and all what is in it for our livelihood and our enjoyment. He gave man intelligence. On the inevitable day, every human being must stand before God for their judgment. They will not be judged by their ancestry, tribes and customs. This is why we who know better must educate them accordingly. We are doing them a mortal and spiritual favor.
God also gave us a free mind and will which He will not touch. We will either submit to Him or else. If they reject us, too bad for them.
People as you who oppose religion have done more harm in the world. You have caused division and disunity. Place the blame where it belongs and not on those who recognize and worship God. One day you will find out.
smh:
Thank you for replying to my comment.
Allow me to further comment on why I must disagree with you.
I have a native Indian friend who lives on a Reservation here in Canada. He was a drunkard, and saw no way out of his bondage. One day another Indian man – an evangelist – came to his Reservation, put up a gospel tent, and began preaching the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ each evening.
My friend attended. He heard the good news of the gospel. One evening he was saved, and miraculously delivered. Other young men followed him. Soon the Reservation was abuzz with the news of ”the white man’s God” and what he could do.
This Indian man, the ex-drunk, a few years later was elected Chief of his Reservation, a post he served for about 18 years (I think it was). Then he was made a Justice the Peace, a J.P., in the Ontario Courts and filled that position for several years. He was ordained a minister of the gospel, and built a beautiful church for his people on…
Today with TV, computer and newspaper, they read/hear and everyone wants rights even though they are wrong.
To this day, the Canadian Indian tribes do not consider themselves equals and have no wish to assimilate in this society. This is a problem with them. They reside on a Reserve. The men especially drink a lot and get drunk.
Especially in recent years the government has bent head over heels to assist them, building houses etc., for them. Yet they continue with their primitive ways.
The government has banned bringing in and selling liquor on those Reserves.
You heard recently how many of them, young ones committed suicide. The government is not to be blamed for that.
They do not recognize or accept that we reside in a new era, a new century. If they do not wish to change (no one is forcing them) they will always live a dissatisfied life.
So what change do they want and what are their interests that this government has not fulfilled to please them.
In total agreement with this request
Continuation …
He was ordained a minister of the gospel, and built a beautiful church for his people on his Reservation. I
have had the honor of preaching many times in that church over the years, and also in native churches across Canada.
smh, I can assure you that the aboriginal people who have found Christ are grateful for the way the
gospel has helped them, and bettered their people.
For a definition of the gospel, its power and what it does, how it is to be spread, and its exclusive claims, please read in the Bible:
1 Corinthians 15:1-4. Romans 1:16. 2 Corinthians 5:17-20. Galatians 1:8,9.
Sincerely, Rev. Donald Hill, Evangelist.