IN response to a Stabroek News article (Sat, Sept 13th, 2014) under the caption ‘Miners to challenge Amerindian land extensions – set up fund, legal team for class action suit’.
Kindly allow me to state the following:
1. Let me educate the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA) that the legal ownership rights of Guyana’s indigenous peoples to their lands is not a Johnny- come-lately issue but an issue that engaged Guyana’s past Governments for years and continues to engage our current Government. So it is strange that the GGDMA has now decided to fight against the land rights of Guyana’s indigenous peoples.
2. The GGDMA must know that one of the conditions for Guyana’s independence on the 26 May, 1966 was on Amerindian land rights. This condition states that the “Amerindians be granted legal ownership or rights of occupancy over areas and reservations or parts thereof where any tribe or community of Amerindians is now ordinarily resident or settled and other legal rights, such as right of passage, in respect of any other lands where they now, by tradition or custom de facto enjoy freedoms and permissions corresponding to rights of that nature. In this context it is intended that legal ownership shall comprise all rights normally attaching to such ownership’’(report of the 1965 British Guiana Independence Conference, Annex C, paragraph 1).
3. To comply with the above–mentioned legal condition, an Amerindian Lands Commission (ALC) was established in 1966. This became known as Amerindian Land Commission Ordinance 1966, which was re-enacted as the Amerindian Lands Commission Act Chapter 59:03
4. The ALC, in its report of 1969 that was presented, stated that indigenous communities claimed 43,000 square miles of land, most of which was rejected on the basis of being “excessive and beyond the ability of residents to develop and administer.” The ALC recommended that 128 communities receive communal freehold title to 24,000 square miles of land, including mineral rights to a depth of 50 feet. It is important to note that the ALC did not visit all the areas of Guyana occupied by indigenous peoples and as a result no account was made for a number of communities.
5. So the process of Amerindian land titling and extensions continue by the government of Guyana to secure the land rights of its indigenous peoples, consistent with international obligations. The upcoming land-titling, demarcation and extension project funded by payments received from the Guyana/Norway agreement was a recommendation made by indigenous communities at the 2009 Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) consultations. The project is therefore an LCDs project which, for nearly four years the Amerindians peoples have been patiently waiting on. And for the GGDMA to claim that they will now legally challenge the Amerindian land titling project is totally being unjust and unfair to Guyana’s indigenous peoples, who have a spiritual attachment to their lands.

PETER PERSAUD