Guyana is a multi-cultural society with multi-cultural skills, and the multi-cultural nature of our society is a strong asset because it prepares us to understand and empathise with different cultures around the world. Possessing multi-cultural skills predisposes individuals and nations to success.

This diversity is Guyana’s strength, it enhances this nation and Government has taken steps to ensure that all the various parts of Guyana’s cultural mosaic, all the contributions made by this nation’s different peoples, wherever they have come from, including the Amerindian fraternity of people, whom all other races in the national landscape came and met, that their cultural phenomena, and their contributions to the acculturalisation process are respected and expanded.
They were a forgotten, marginalised people in the landscape of Guyanese nationhood. All, or most, of the amenities of civilized society – or the prerequisites that shape and propel developmental evolution through governmental intercessions were trickled down to their communities in such a manner as to be almost non-existent.
Today the Indigenous Peoples of Guyana have come into their own and have been accorded the recognition of their place in the history of this nation as Guyana’s first peoples.
Their cultures, their craft, their cuisine, their art, their traditional lifestyles, while consciously being preserved, have emerged into mainstream Guyanese identity.
They have been granted titles to their lands; communication advances assure linkages between the central authorities and even the most remote communities.
Education, health, infrastructure – every area hitherto neglected is being addressed on a sustained basis.
Difficult terrain and vast distances between communities sometimes constrain developmental initiatives, but perseverance and innovation ensure that progress is sustained, and that every village is on the development radar.
There is a long way to go, because Guyana, although rich in natural resources, lack the wherewithal to optimally exploit those resources, so job creation and consequently wealth creation present challenges across the nation and impact on the socio-developmental dynamics of every community in Guyana.
However, the Indigenous peoples of this land are fully integrated into mainstream Guyanese society, so much so that they have entered into all the professions, with several members of their collective community serving at the highest policy-making levels in the land.
Successive Amerindian Heritage Months have proven to be resounding successes, with, in 2008, the culmination of the historic meeting of leaders and groups lobbying to protect the rights of Indigenous Indians in the vast Amazon Basin of South America, held in the Umana Yana on Wednesday 24th September of that year.
The groups met in Guyana under the umbrella Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation (ACTO), which represents one and a half million Indigenous Peoples from 420 ethnic groups in eight countries in South America.
Plenary sessions were held at the International Conference Centre in Liliendaal on 25th and 26th September 2008.
Then ACTO Secretary-General, Francisco Ruiz Marmolejo, said that the group hoped to have a clear mandate from the meeting in Guyana, which was the first regional meeting of the body.
ACTO is an international organisation that promotes sustainable development of the Amazon Basin. It was created by the signatories to the 1978 Amazon Cooperation Treaty for the promotion of harmonious development of the Basin.
In addition to delegates from member states participation also came from the Amazonian Parliament (PARLAMAZ), the Co-ordinating Body for the Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), and the Associacion De Universidades Amazonicas (UNAMAZ).
Guyana’s Prime Minister Samuel Hinds had pledged Government’s firm support for ACTO’s action agenda that ensued out of the meeting.
That promise has been kept, and Guyana’s Amerindian peoples are once again celebrating their heritage on a national scale since Father of the Nation, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, declared September as Amerindian Heritage Month.