…can’t get back to talking about Yukuriba Heights – the creative community and our plans for creation of that significant Maroon Culture Trail, dedicated to the Maroons of the Americas, The Philip Moore Artists’ Retreat, or anything to do with Before the Road to Brazil – if I don’t first comment on some personal issues with media coverage of the Independence snniversary celebrations.

First problem: How is it possible that throughout the coverage, Guyana’s Amerindians were as usual, repeatedly designated “indigenous” without any reference being made to the recently stimulated national conversation questioning the legitimacy of this. I recall writing in this column not so long ago

“I was warned that this was an issue as volatile as the identity and validity of the name ‘Jesus’ and would hardly be permitted to survive; much less nurtured as stimulus for a national debate; no one would be willing to respond, I was told. However, like the cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead, I’m inclined to ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world’, especially when historical facts supported by DNA evidence could prove that Africans were the first Guyanese.

If this is true, then what became of them, one wonders? Why is it that, except for some proof that they traded with the Amerindians when ‘They Came Before Columbus’ what became of indications of the earlier presence of Africans here, long before the slave trade? How and why did the living presence of Africans in the Americas (in Guyana?) get expunged? When examined carefully, what more would history’s palimpsest reveal that some historians like Dr Imhotep are discovering while others seem reluctant to investigate and disseminate? Why shouldn’t we examine the records…disclose the truth…encourage a national discourse sparking our children’s curiosity about their origins; an interest informed by facts and the pursuit of truth?”

All this having been said before, .aired in other sections of the media, I find it curious that the coverage of our 50th Anniversary Celebrations as an independent nation failed to acknowledge, even with a passing reference, this significant question, if merely because of its relevance to the validation of our historic record. Surely some member of the press covering the events should have thought about this.

Another problem with a big question: What exactly was that camera (man…crew?) recording Guyana’s 50th Independence Celebrations on May 25, at Jubilee Park thinking about? I found the camerawork very strange indeed, and that’s putting it mildly. I feel sure I’ll have some serious issues with the final product of that audio visual documentation….made myself hoarse screaming at the National Communications Network (NCN) screen…
“Okay – PAN NOW, PAN, PAN, PAN! Give us a WIDE ANGLE PLEEEEASE…let’s see the faces of our Guyana Diaspora…come home from far flung corners of the globe for this celebration; let us see the light in their eyes reflecting the joy of their homecoming to witness this – these memories they must soon pack away…go back to…“Ohhhhh – JUST ONE CLOSE-UP, PLEASE?” I begged.
But the NCN camera never heard me. It continued like that throughout national television’s documentation of our nation’s historic moment. I saw more military boots than the peoples’ faces….don’t know what happened before that, because I’d joined the broadcast just after nine, when children were prancing around in the park…that’s when I began to scream – before the camera held my attention.
For someone without a profound knowledge of filmmaking, only what was gleaned from my screenwriter husband, I think I’ve a fair sense of camera directions. Therefore I walked away from the television on Wednesday night feeling I’d been deprived; as if I didn’t get the true picture, the full lyrics of that historic, symphonic presentation…dissonances et al, at Jubilee Park on Independence Eve 2016.
However, not even poor judgment about camera angles could diminish for me, the magic of that moment when the Golden Arrowhead was flirting with the wind while she danced up her 150ft pole.
The television journalist Dan Rather asserts in his book title that: ‘The Camera Never Blinks’; from my POV, The Jubilee Documentary Camera Hardly Moved – therefore it blinked.
Next week Baracara Island, an historic maroon settlement…a potential heritage site…a tourist designation.