The Working People’s Alliance (WPA) pays tribute to all Amerindians who conquered obstacles to become involved in national affairs and extends wishes for the indigenous communities of Guyana to win more respect and cooperation.
In its message the WPA says the late Stephen Campbell stands out among the pioneering public figures of indigenous peoples, yet his name is hardly known to the present day school populations or to their parents. The party noted that it has not only participated in two Region Eight (Pakaraimas) coalition administrations but it has secured special grants from United Kingdom-based organisations to make it practicable for WPA regional councillors to serve full time in extremely tough terrain in the region.
The WPA said today the forest and climate change policies of the present government reveal aspects of the “old system of dominance, usurpation and subtle exclusion that should be seriously reversed.” It said too rather than taking counsel, the regime has moved to disable the foremost voice of expertise against those forest policies and modes of governance and has for a time succeeded in recruiting support for unsuspecting complicit international organisations.
“On reflection it is a matter of national disgrace that Dr Janette Bulkan, who decades after Stephen Campbell became by choice a free, non-partisan and foremost voice of essential Amerindian interests should be silenced,” it said. “All right thinking people” should be encouraged by the strides being made by indigenous peoples in the hemisphere, “just as we should be incensed at the new violent attacks on Afro Columbians in South America,” the WPA said.
According to the WPA it is essential also to break some of the mystique attached to various ethnic groups in Guyana and to accept that they also have a common interest not only as Guyanese, but as working people who are the object of growing manipulation and exploitation, including gender exploitation and trafficking. The WPA also said it may be timely to remind the government and the President, “who recently rebuked an Amerindian leader for talking race”, that he is yet to rebuke the Guyana Chronicle for choosing an ethnic holiday in 2007 “to make a triumphalist editorial boast about the ruling party’s ‘overwhelming’ ethnic support in a previous general election.”
