ALL of 530 years after Christopher Columbus opened the way for Europe’s mass decimation of the Caribbean’s and the Americas’ indigenous people, theft of their lands and plunder of their resources, the world’s indigenous populations are still knocking on global doors, both gently and loudly, demanding due respect for who they are and what they mean to our world.

The United Nations and many global, regional and national entities have ensured the world has recognised their existence, but gaining the respect they should never have had to ask for will remain a bad dream and distant reality, unless more is done now – today and tomorrow – to address fundamental issues like land rights ands titles, respect for indigenous traditions and cultures and recognising the quiet positive influence the world’s First People and their descendants have had (and continue to have) on maintaining the balance between humankind and nature, between their communities and the environment.

Guyana has a long history of respecting, promoting and defending its indigenous people, all governments since independence taking steps – small, medium and big – that have affected the First People nations, now an annual institutionalised mechanism through the National Toshaos Council (NTC) conferences bringing governments and indigenous leaders to address common approaches to issues in indigenous communities.

The maps of British Guiana erased the traditional boundaries and forced First People into domiciled existence on the margins of society while their lands were appropriated by European settlers, leaving them seeking more than just recognition of their existence. Land titling is a regional and universal matter affecting most (if not all) indigenous societies globally and until and unless workable solutions can be found that will honestly address and redress related wrongs, the struggles for related justice will continue and intensify.

National governments have prime responsibility to address outstanding issues their indigenous people have lived with for centuries, and in this regard the demarcation project under way in Guyana is an important first step towards a satisfactory solution.

Successive governments have also respected preservation of the culture of Guyana’s indigenous people, who have long come out of the dark and can see a lighted path to their future.
Another sore point around the world has been a general lack of sufficient recognition of indigenous people’s contributions to a cleaner, greener and sustainable planet. They have forever lived with nature and their resistance to assimilation by hostile cultures is based on their generational construct as people who live on and on with full respect for and defense of the environment with all its flora and fauna, birds and animals, trees and flowers and traditional medicines that have forever stood all tests of time.

Like with the struggles for world peace and peace in the Middle East, not every phase is achieved with the speed necessary to galvanise more change, but in the case of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and The Americas, five centuries is too long a time to have had to wait.

CARICOM is pursuing Reparations from Europe for Slavery and Native Genocide and Guyana and Belize have started a cooperative approach to common issues affecting their indigenous peoples, but ways must be found to also continue to engage Caribbean organisations of indigenous people in deeper and more engaging ways in the search for solutions. Guyana has such an established mechanism and it would do well for other CARICOM states that haven’t moved in that direction to take a page from Guyana and turn a new leaf for their First People.

First People don’t have to be reminded they are part of a society they were the first inhabitants, protectors and defenders of and when they do, it’s usually because they have been made to feel like they never existed. That’s not the case in Guyana and it must remain that way, only improving with time and expanding in scope.

Meanwhile, as the world observes Indigenous People’s Day today, here’s to Guyana’s indigenous people and their counterparts around the Caribbean, The Americas and the rest of the whole wide world, with sincere best hopes and wishes that the world’s indigenous populations get their respect due, sooner than later.