The recent complaint of the Chief of the First Peoples, Ricardo Bharath-Hernandez in the press resonates in my letter of July 27, about the improper treatment the Emancipation Support Committee received for government financial assistance.
It is unclear why officials continue to treat annual heritage celebrations with discourtesy when leaders organise to place their separate identities on the horizon of our country. While we attempt to brand our country as a place where people of diverse cultures live harmoniously, we continue to abuse the rights of those who struggle to make this diversity a reality.
We need to appreciate that celebrations honour the past in which ancestors struggled hard for a cultural identity. In the present, their descendants keep difference alive peacefully.
First Peoples' nations, 500-plus years ago and after, experienced colonial brutality of enslavement; the stigma of being regarded as savages; and the loss of people to genocide in large numbers. Yet those few who remained alive resisted colonial dominance and wisely passed on to their descendants their culture for sharing with all Trinbagonians.
Therefore today, First Peoples' Trinbagonians must be shown an understanding and empathy due to them as a matter of honour and respect. It is their right as citizens of our country, contributing to notions of "multiculturalism" and "diversity" to bring to the fore their heritage. Denials and confused transactions for state funds should not hamper them.
Why should they have to clamour for financial help from a society which they assume has embraced them? This continued lack of respect for the rights of citizens, African and Aboriginal descendants, to conduct their rituals and ceremonies with dignity, needs to be researched to find the cause. Is it due to discrimination or to a poor work ethic?
Dr Yvonne Bobb-Smith
Port-of-Spain
