Dear Editor,
Eric Phillips continues the quest to trivialize Amerindian land rights by conflating that right rooted in ownership and patrimony and exercised by occupation and possession with land reparation for enslavement. The two concepts could not be more different. This is not to say that Amerindians are not entitled to reparation for their enslavement. However, their entitlement to land has nothing to do with reparation for their oppression. Also, it has nothing to do with time of arrival or any hackneyed ‘first come’ theories. It has to do with the fact that this was/is their land to begin with. Mr Phillips produces weak and haphazard scholarship and flimsy proof for his utterances.
Again, Amerindian entitlement is not rooted in who came first because they came first. It is rooted in who owned the land and occupied and possessed it in pursuit of that ownership. It is rooted in the fact that borders did not exist for thousands of years and that Amerindians moved freely on vast migratory networks spanning the Guianas, Brazil and Venezuela. It is grounded in the fact that Amerindian nations, including the ones Mr Phillips claims are latecomers compared to Africans, have been back and forth to the present-day Guyana for thousands of years before Europeans and Africans arrived. It is established in the remarkable nomadism of Amerindians.
Even if we accept Mr Phillips’ erroneous ownership by arrival thesis, the fact would remain that those Amerindian nations he claimed came after Africans actually owned, occupied and possessed the lands they claimed for over a hundred years while enslaved Africans did not. So, there is a deep-seated historical and legal basis for Amerindian land claims that is distinct and separate from any entitlement by any group to reparatory justice for enslavement and genocide.
Where does Mr Phillips’ farcical adventure end? Using his simplistic ‘who came first’ theory, shouldn’t the nations he recognized as entitled get considerably more because they came first and were here far longer (thousands of years) than anyone else? Let’s not stop here. Aren’t all oppressed group entitled to land as reparation because they all came here at some point and were repressed? Why should Africans get land and indentured servants not get land commensurate with their level of oppression?
The land for reparation argument is a destructive one. Mr Phillips does not demand land for African-Guyanese from Europeans in Europe. He is demanding it from all Guyanese, including Africans, in Guyana. He wants lands based on reparatory justice only for Africans when every ethnic group in Guyana suffered in some fashion. Where does this end when non-Africans argue they are entitled to land for reparatory justice for their repression under the PNC and where non-Indians will argue the same under the PPP?
Mr Phillips is an advisor to the President of Guyana and the President’s party and the government as a whole has been silent on his public statements. This silence also undermines Caricom’s efforts at seeking reparation as well as the case for millions of Africans in Guyana and the wider region.
On Mr Phillips’ claim of Africans never being empowered, he forgets the preferential treatment for Africans under PNC rule. The building of Guyana is not exclusive to Africans. It is continuous and everyone contributed or contributes. If we use the narrow ethnic lenses Mr Phillips and others use we cannot see the entire history of this country and the contributions, good and bad, of all. We also cannot recognize when our blind and shallow pursuits of ethnic exclusivity and advancement can destroy the terra firma upon which we all need to exist.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
