Europeans found when they arrived…
–T’dad academic
I WAS GREATLY honoured to attend a public lecture recently in Port of Spain, Trinidad,  about the great civilisations of Indigenous Peoples (called the Amerindians in Guyana ) throughout South and North America before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Entitled  ‘The New World Before Columbus’, the informative talk was delivered by Jean Patricia Elie, a Research Fellow at the University of Trinidad and Tobago.

Ms. Elie reminded the audience that the various branches of our First Peoples all descended from the first original settlers who came across the ice-covered bridge between what is now Russia and Alaska. They then spread out over hundreds of thousands of years into several ‘tribes’, including what eventually became Guyana.

Though having the same “ancestry and gene pool,” they had different types of development, including in physical structures. For example, the indigenous ‘Indians’ of the interior of the USA, such as the Lakota (Sioux), had a “simple civilisation” with animal hide tents which suited a nomadic hunting culture. By contrast, those in Central America had large, more complex structures.

Generally, when the Europeans first came, the various peoples in the main were “very well developed,” said Ms. Elie, in terms of how they related to nature and mastered it for their benefits. Where necessary, they had extensive agricultural layouts and irrigation systems. They farmed/cultivated food such as potatoes and vanilla. They domesticated animals like the llama (a relative of the camel).

Ms. Elie,  who is a founding  member and secretary for the regional NGO, ‘Partners for First People’s Development’, acknowledged there were internecine warfare. She acknowledged that  some  indigenous societies, such as the Mayans in Central America, were ‘stratified’. However, it was minor in comparison to what happened after the arrival of the Europeans with their then imperialistic outlook, and whose presence at that conjuncture resulted in the spreading of diseases, slavery, and other wrongs against the aboriginal peoples.

Fielding questions from the audience, Ms. Elie dismissed the views that the Hemisphere’s indigenous people were overly influenced by possible arrivals from Africa. This theory was  propounded by Guyanese writer, Ivan Van Sertima. She said that the huge stone heads, with African features and as referred to by Van Sertima, found in Central America was a “coincidence,” in the sense that the heads had what appears to be features. She asserted that in the main, “(There) were no cultural links with Africa.”

Ms. Elie, according to the lecture’s publicity flyer, has played an active role in the development of Cultural Heritage Projects for the Santa Rosa Carib community in the town of Arima in Central Trinidad. A concentration of Trinidadians, who are descendents of the original indigenous peoples live there.  Three years ago, I was privileged to pay a courtesy call on the ‘Carib Queen’ there, Valentina Medina. On one occasion, Guyana’s then (now Minister of Foreign Affairs) Minister of Amerindian Affairs,  Hon. Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett,  attended a Festival as an invited dignitary.

Arima was the scene of a 1699 uprising by the Caribs, led by the great warrior chief, Hyarima, against misguided and apparently oppressive Catholic missionaries and injustice in general at the time.

There is an informative paper, ‘Aboriginal Trinidad and the Guianas: An Historical Reconstruction’ by Stephen D. Glazier. It is in an October 1980 number of the Journal of the Walter Roth Museum in Georgetown. It appears, from what I read, the indigenous peoples of what became Trinidad and Tobago were more closely linked, culturally, with the mainland, including Guyana, than those other aboriginal settlements in the eastern Caribbean islands like Barbados. For example, tools may have been slightly different.

But, as Ms. Elie srtressed in her captivating lecture, the circum-Caribbean indigenous peoples, wherever they may be, had great civilisations.  By looking at their history, we can appreciate their achievements that continue to his day as they work with other peoples to make the societies even better places for all.

These include the descendents of Europeans, who cannot now be blamed for  that unsavoury part of history of the Americas, but even then, there were those individual voices who spoke out against the genocide and other evils and supported justified fight-backs, whether it be at  Wounded Knee (in Dakota,USA) or  Arima.

Ms. Elie’s talk was most beneficial indeed, and I was glad I attended.

(NORMAN FARIA <nfaria@caribsurf.com> IS GUYANA’S HONORARY CONSUL IN BARBADOS)