Ke­jan Haynes

Chief of the San­ta Rosa First Peo­ples, Ri­car­do Bharath-Her­nan­dez, con­tin­ues to call on Gov­ern­ment to show more re­spect to in­dige­nous peo­ple in the coun­try through a hol­i­day, land, in­vest­ing in cul­ture and for the Par­lia­ment to hold a mo­ment of si­lence in their ho­n­our when the re­mem­ber the lives of their an­ces­tors found dur­ing the ren­o­va­tion of the Red House.

He made the call on the oc­ca­sion of In­ter­na­tion­al Day of the World’s In­dige­nous Peo­ple ob­served at the First Peo­ples head­quar­ters in Ari­ma yes­ter­day.

Bharath-Her­nan­dez said the land his peo­ple are re­quest­ing will help them pro­tect the for­est re­serves to keep their cul­ture alive. Giv­ing an ex­am­ple, he said quar­ry­ing has de­stroyed sev­er­al of the trees which pro­duce leaves that they need for their cer­e­monies.

“Four hun­dred acres is not to be bull­dozed to build hous­es for res­i­dences for peo­ple,” he said.

“In the area where we used to go, an area called Tapana, you could hard­ly get a leaf be­cause the quar­ry­ing has de­stroyed the ma­te­r­i­al. The leaves to make bas­kets to make the im­ple­ments to process the cas­sa­va is all dis­ap­peared.”

On the is­sue of repa­ra­tions, Bharath-Her­nan­dez said no gov­ern­ment can ever pay a dol­lar val­ue for the de­struc­tion in­flict­ed by the colo­nial pow­ers.

“We do not see repa­ra­tions as quan­ti­fy­ing every ill and at­tach­ing a cost to them. We do not see repa­ra­tions like that. Colo­nial gov­ern­ments would not be able to ad­dress claims on dol­lar val­ue. Rather, they can of­fer as­sis­tance for projects that in­dige­nous peo­ples wish to un­der­take so that they can move for­ward. That is how we see repa­ra­tions,” he said.

He said de­scen­dants can con­tribute to the set­ting up of sus­tain­able pro­grammes to en­sure the preser­va­tion of their in­dige­nous lan­guages, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, mu­sic, song and dance and the un­veil­ing of a mon­u­ment to the First Peo­ples at the Red House site in Port-of-Spain.

Speak­ing to the Red House, he asked Ari­ma MP Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son to or­gan­ise a tent for this year’s com­mem­o­ra­tion cer­e­mo­ny for the First Peo­ples found at the site in 2013 dur­ing ren­o­va­tion of the build­ing. He al­so said they will ob­serve a mo­ment of si­lence at that event as well.

“You all must stand for a minute’s si­lence and all of the in­dige­nous peo­ple and the re­mains that you all are sit­ting on in that place. It must hap­pen. If it don’t hap­pen, you will have trou­ble!” Bharath said.

“They can­not speak to us as we are speak­ing, but they can speak to us by re­veal­ing them­selves in their bur­ial sites. And all these places that we keep find­ing the re­mains, they have re­vealed them­selves. And you all must put some­thing in place to ob­serve and re­spect, even for a minute, that oc­ca­sion.”