MOST of the world’s estimated 300 million indigenous peoples live in poverty and face grave inequalities; and therefore it has become a burning socio-economic problem which needs to be resolved by governments and the international community.
At the recent launch of the UN Indigenous Peoples’ Partnership, to promote the rights of the world’s indigenous peoples, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that “indigenous people suffered centuries of oppression, and continue to lose their lands, their languages and their resources at an alarming rate.”
The UN highlights that indigenous children are less likely than other children to be in school, and more likely to drop out of school. Indigenous girls are at even greater risk of being excluded from school. This resonates as well with the recent World Bank’s Global Monitoring Report, which devoted a chapter to the issue of indigenous and vulnerable peoples, and the need to address their needs in order to reach the UN Millennium Development Goals.
Often called the guardians or caretakers of the earth, the UN noted, indigenous peoples share a profound attachment to, and stewardship of, their environment – which encompasses many of the world’s most valuable and vulnerable ecosystems, including the Arctic, tundra, mountains, boreal woodlands, riverine and coastal zones, semi-arid rangelands and tropical forests.
In order to survive for millennia on these fragile environments, native people have developed a holistic knowledge of their land and resources that many contemporary societies lack. Where most of humankind tend to seek dominion over the natural world, the approach of indigenous peoples is the very essence of sustainable development — development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to survive and flourish.
“It is only the new sensibilities the rest of us have developed over the grave ecological damage we are doing that allows us now to appreciate the way indigenous peoples instinctively relate to the environment (in the way they)conduct their lives”, General Assembly President Stoyan Ganev stated in launching the International Indigenous Year, on 10 December 1992. “Instead of following indigenous peoples’ example of how to love and how to live with their land, too often, we have coveted it and tried to expropriate it.”
In our country, we have a significant indigenous population; and like their counterparts from other parts of the world, their development was suppressed by centuries of colonial oppression.
Under an independent Guyana, their cause was not helped much, because the government that ruled this country during the post-independence period almost totally ignored the plight of our indigenous peoples. In fact, that era was like a period of neo-colonial oppression for our indigenous population.
However, when the current government took office in 1992, it immediately embarked upon policies and programmes to address the needs of  indigenous peoples; and under the visionary leadership of the late President Dr Cheddi Jagan, the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs was established in 1994. And that was the first time in the history of our country that we had such a ministry.
Ever since that historic establishment, there has been a marked improvement in all aspects of the lives of the indigenous peoples of this country. There are now more schools, health and educational facilities, greater economic opportunities, and supply of electricity and potable water in communities which never had these things .
Orealla Toshao Floyd Edwards took the opportunity to highlight the improvements witnessed in that community.
He explained: “Orealla has witnessed quite a lot of development, over the years, in the water system (and in) the revetment of the waterfront, because of the continuous erosion”.
According to Edwards, the Guyana Water Inc (GWI) has installed a new water pump and transmission lines in an effort to provide an improved level of service to Orealla residents.
“Right up the hill now, residents will have water, thanks to this project which has been completed recently,” he said.
If one were to speak to toshaos from other communities, there will be responses similar to that given by Toshao Edwards.
It would be naïve to say there are not still many problems and challenges which need to be tackled in these communities, but it would be more than naïve not to recognise and acknowledge the marked improvement in the lives of the first people who set foot on our soil.