The major elements of the T&T population cannot but feel for the call by Eric Lewis, the Grand Chief of the Moruga Amerindian community, for greater attention and respect to be given to the indigenous population.
Any serious recounting of the history of the Caribbean will list the Amerindian people as those who travelled across the Bering Strait west to North America. Over the centuries, the First Peoples have filtered down to Tierra Del Fuego at the southernmost tip of continental South America.
The history of the treatment of the First Peoples in the “New World” has been brutal, genocidal, really. Historians and geologists number the murder and the deadly infection of the Amerindians with European diseases in the tens of millions. In Trinidad, there are records of a number of brutal assaults of Amerindian warriors who sought to resist enslavement and acculturation by the Spaniards.
In modern times, the neglect and domination of the First Peoples by West Indian societies, while not being as violent, have been cultural and an ignoring of the needs of those left behind. So that when Chief Lewis complains that his people and those of other nations of First Peoples have been “forgotten, sidelined and ostracised”, the leaders of the society and every individual conscious of the historical importance of those who cleared the way for a Caribbean civilisation must pay serious attention.
The grant of lands to the Amerindian society of East Trinidad, led by Chief Ricardo Bharath has given a measure of recognition to that group of Amerindian peoples. So too the remains of 60 First Peoples discovered at a burial site on the grounds of the Red House were respectfully reburied there.
The raising of the voice of the Amerindian peoples from the deep south of Trinidad is an indication that there is much more to be done to preserve the offspring of our First Peoples in the South and the East. The occasion of this recent re-statement of the need to recognise and honour the First Peoples came at the unveiling of a statue of the great Amerindian warrior, Utuyaney, who fought against colonisation by the Spanish governors.
Five hundred years later, with a far greater understanding of ourselves and our society being made up of a variety of peoples who came from almost every part of the world, we need to hold the Amerindian population in high esteem. They fought wars of survival against large European armies with far superior weaponry than they had. And the wars were not only for their physical survival but for their cultural habits and patterns of life to be respected and preserved for the generations ahead.
In modern T&T, one major means of preserving the knowledge of our forefathers must be to teach the history of the indigenous people in our school curricula in a serious and fundamental way, not the tired old European story of Arawaks and Caribs fighting each other and even eating the remains of those slaughtered.
But how they contributed to the growth and cultural development of T&T and other Caribbean societies, their planting of crops, their foods and their village organisation. The dozens of Amerindian place names all over the country must be recognised for what they are—contributions to modern T&T.
