On August 9, “International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples” was celebrated worldwide. This year’s theme was “Leaving no one behind: Indigenous Peoples and the call for a new social contract”.  This theme, in effect, calls for the integration of Indigenous Peoples at all levels with the mainstream society, to protect their rights and to obtain free, fair and informed consent for whatever action is taken affecting them.  In the case of Guyana, the “Indigenous People” is the Amerindian community.

The roots of the problems faced by Indigenous Peoples lie in the direct or indirect effects of colonialism.  With colonialism, Indigenous Peoples lost autonomy over their territory and natural resources, became marginalised, excluded from participation in society, and stereotyped as backward and ignorant.  This shutting out of indigenous people from society negatively affected the society as a whole since it denied solutions to combat climate change and the restoring and protecting biodiversity which indigenous people possessed because of their deep knowledge of the natural world around them and because of the symbiotic and harmonious relationship between Man and Nature they had evolved.

The words of Nigel Crawhall, Chief of Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems of UNESCO, adequately sums up the meaning of the Indigenous Peoples Day theme: “Today, the global human population faces the consequences of irresponsible exploitation of natural resources, species extinction and fossil pollution that have plunged both Nature and humans into a crisis.  In seeking solutions to such crisis, we need to recognise that Indigenous Peoples’ values as well as their traditional knowledge and governance arrangements, beliefs and practices are paramount to achieving sustainable development and climate resilience”.

The Organization of American States (OAS) of which Guyana is a member celebrated the Day and its Belizean Assistant Secretary General Nestor Mendez was emphatic that the OAS was geared towards ensuring that “the voices of the Indigenous Peoples must be heard and their needs and concerns clearly respected in this new social contract”.

Guyana  has gone furthest in achieving the goals of the Indigenous Peoples Day:  It is the only country in the Americas where the Indigenous (Amerindian) population continues to grow and where a sizable part of the national territory has been allocated to them in legal ownership.   In the districts where Amerindian people reside, properly equipped schools are being built so that eventually all Indigenous children would be schooled;  adequate medical centres are being built,  and care is taken to extend all social services available in coastal regions such as old-age pensions and the grants given to school children.  Communications such as telephones, television and computers are methodically being extended in the Amerindian communities and the Interior road system is being upgraded and expanded.  Hundreds of scholarships for tertiary education are being made available in the Interior Regions and Amerindians are today Members of Parliament and Ministers of Government and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament is an Amerindian.  When the road from Lethem to Linden is completed, the Coast and the Interior would be fully linked and would be on par.  Guyana has gone a far way in achieving the goals of International Day of Indigenous Peoples and visitors from other countries have often asked Guyanese how were they able to achieve such.

There are two central answers:  firstly, the Amerindian vote holds the balance between the two main competing political parties and both parties, therefore, try to accommodate and court the Indigenous population and secondly, the East Indian population whose ancestors were brought here as indentured servants in the 19th and early 20th centuries from a plural Indian society, suffered discriminations which they encountered from the dominant monolithic Creole Western Society.  They thus have an empathy with the Amerindian population and try to satisfy their “plural” requirements.