– By Janette Bulkan
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The consequences of State claims to, and controls over, the territories of Guyana’s Indigenous Peoples (Amerindians) are traced through successive Dutch and British colonial to post-Independence governments. From the mid-eighteenth century, a numerically small sugar plantocracy wielded influence within local government and ensured that colonial policy served its interests which were located on the coastland.
Hinterland policies extended the capitalist approach to natural resources extraction and favoured the dominance of the small stratum of monied interests over the majority of Crown licences for forestry, mining and ranching, issued over claimed Indigenous lands.
The colonial government’s approach to Indigenous Peoples was protectionist, but their land rights were not settled in law. Authoritarian post-Independence governments have used the discretionary power in the inherited legislative framework to expand the numbers of, and areas covered by, logging and mining licences.
The State is aided by the lack of a reservation process for forests and/or a settlement process to determine and settle pre-existing customary rights of Indigenous Peoples, twin processes that were instituted in the majority of British colonies. Indigenous rights and privileges in their customary lands have been steadily eroded in law, policy and practice. Amerindians receive few economic benefits from natural resources operations on either their legally titled communal lands or customary lands.
READ MORE: Original_lords_of_the_soil_The_erosion of Amerindian territorial rights in Guyana
Comments
Thanks for sharing the article. The territorial rights of indigenous peoples is becoming a crucial issue in humanity’s fight to preserve what remains of our tropical rainforests.
Sorry but the only winners in that struggle
are the corrupt elitist political/business class
in GT.
Will any future Guyana government change
that ? Doubt it !
However expect the “nationalisation
V privatisation” argument to enter the
political arena.
Crown lands V private lands.
Who owns the Guyana rain Forrest ?
Crown state or private ?
More questions than answers
LAND reformation laws enacted ASAP
way forward.
My take
Kamtan
Ps interesting read !
It would have been wise for the media agencies to keep the resources of the interior a secret as every oil & gas company are like vultures waiting to search for oil and natural gas, at the expense of Amerindians who lived there for thousands of years.
Just look at what the multi-nationals did to Venezuela’s jungles pillaging the Orinoco oil sands and the gold.
And then you have Bolsonaro supporting American multi-nationals to pillage the Amazon for profit, Amerindians in Ecuador being rounded up and genocided for American profit, and Yankee expats forcing Amerindians from their homes so that Yankee can retire in the rainforest.
I sometimes pray to God that those who exploit and genocided the Amerindians for profit get eaten by a jaguar or perish from malaria. Amerindians are the forgotten peoples of Guyana and the rest of South America. No one really cares for them, not even the half-European mestizo peoples. Whiteness, “fairness”, Americanness and Yankee doodle run the town storming with an AK, genocided minorities and called it freedom of speech!
Agree !
Amazonian Indians are an endangered
species.
So was the North American ones.
No longer “colonisation” of the planet
“exploitation” of its natural resources
and it’s aboriginal populations.
The greed of humanoids !
kamtan 👽
There are conflicts with major oil companies when drilling for oil in northern USA and Western Canada because the oil is located and transported on Treaty lands of the Native Indians.
On one disputed land in Canada contains over 10 billion barrels of oil.
Sioux Falls and Kinder Morgan pipelines lead to protests, and the government sends spies and instigators to monitor protesters.
Exxon has bailed out from Canada and is in Guyana for the oil, and hopefully, they are offshore 100 miles away from the coast, and not invading rainforest and interior regions for the prospects of oil.
My suspicion is that like the Bai Shai Lin scandal and the RUSAL scandal, oil companies will have free reign to silently murder Amerindian tribes to steal the treaty lands and drill for any prospects of oil.
Some have suspected that the OMAI gold mine scandal of the mercury and cyanide spill was done deliberately, or allowed to have happened to affect the people living there, but this was some time ago and the people who heard the Manager say this are no longer around.
I can’t get house lot these days because rich people from abroad are buying up the land, but these multi-nationals can spill cyanide into the rivers of the Amerindian communities and still become millionaires! Shame!
#1% royalty is post-colonialism
#Exxon = oil curse
# House prices are too high!