Dear Editor,
I refer to the letter ‘Successive gov’ts have sustained the dependency syndrome of our Indigenous Peoples’ in your letter column by S. Fredericks and published July 24, 2021. My specific interest is the author’s reference to a toshao’s stipend comparative to the toshao’s scope of responsibilities. The author’s question on the continued efficacy of this model has also been around for a while. This model has been in use for as long as I can recall. I suggest another, which I was fortunate to have experienced in Peru. In the Peruvian model the youth demographic is encouraged to aspire for the leadership (toshao) position; the prospective candidates must be of good academic standing. Once successful, the national government then favours the new toshao with a full scholarship for tertiary level education. I write this in the hope that this short missive will be added to the plurality of ideas under consideration presently on moving indigenous leadership forward.
Sincerely,
Rohan Sagar
