Some 40,000 to 45,000 Amerindians live in Guyana. [15] Amerindian lands comprise about 16 percent of the country, including 10 to 15 percent of the State Forest. Some Amerindians continue to live in traditional, forest-dependent communities while others are highly integrated into Guyana’s national economy and express the clear desire to adopt modern techniques, technologies, and products. Some work in logging in communities concentrated along the Brazilian and Venezuelan borders and in the northern section of the country between the Cuyuni river and the Atlantic Ocean.
Guyana’s Amerindians can be divided into nine ethnic groups: the Arawak, Akawaio, Arekuna, Carib, Makushi, Patamona, Wapisiana, Warau, and Waiwai. Research during the 1980s identified more than 115 different Amerindian villages, but since individuals and entire villages often relocate, this figure can be used only as an estimate. [16] Hinterland Guyanese are not all Amerindians so separating Amerindian land issues from hinterland Guyanese issues is a complex task.
Like many countries, Guyana has yet to resolve certain Amerindian land issues. Some indigenous people live in logging and mining concessions or in areas where these activities have been proposed and rely on threatened forest resources for subsistence. The 1951 Amerindian Act (amended in 1961 and 1976) legally recognized 63 Amerindian villages and two Amerindian districts. The Act specifies who is allowed to live in and use Amerindian areas, how the areas are to be governed, and, most important, the land rights of those Amerindians in villages and districts. The law clearly states that concessions for mining and logging cannot overlap with officially recognized Amerindian lands. In practice, according to Amerindian rights activists and studies by the University of Guyana’s Amerindian Research Unit, concessionaires and Amerindians frequently clash because some traditional communities remain without title to their land or because as traditionally nomadic peoples they make use of areas larger than those titled. As many as 41 Amerindian communities (home to more than 8,000 Amerindians) have not have been officially recognized. [17] Two other problems are the lack of clear demarcation (or the inaccurate surveying) of Amerindian land boundaries, and the lack of assistance in addressing the dark side of mining life alcoholism, prostitution, the pollution of waterways, and more.
An overwhelming problem in much of Guyana’s hinterland, such as Region 1 in the northwest, is a lack of basic education. Another is the general malaise of the population due to malaria and tuberculosis. As Janette Forte argues:
“The economic potential of their forest to indigenous peoples will not be realized if the families involved are simply not able to make use of it. But use of their forest by outsiders will, on current trends, only unfit the indigenous peoples yet further, not merely for participation in resource-based development, but for their very survival. In a nation which needs all the resource use it can mobilize, it is a paralyzing dilemma.” [18]
The basic integrity of these communities is being disrupted as the younger more employable men and women seek jobs in the towns and cities or far off in the mines and logging camps. This drain of cheap labor deprives the communities of the hands needed to plant next year’s crops, hunt, fish, and build, as well as to carry on cultural traditions that have held the groups together for generations.
Since community leaders are poorly informed, forest policy is unclear, and forest service extension into the communities is weak, relationships between the communities and commercial interests seeking access to community-owned forest resources are often fleeting and unfavorable to community development.
References and notes
15. There are differing estimates of Guyana’s Amerindian population: National Environmental Action Plan (43,000), Amerindians and Poverty by Janette Forte from 1986 census (40,000), Populations of Guyanese Amerindian Settlements in the 1980s (43,000), Memorandum from the Guyanese Organization of Indigenous Peoples (45,000).
16. Janette Forte, The Populations of Guyanese Amerindian Settlements in the 1980s, (Amerindian Research Unit, University of Guyana, Georgetown 1990).
17. Janette Forte, The Populations of Guyanese Amerindian Settlements in the 1980s, (Amerindian Research Unit, University of Guyana, Georgetown 1990).
18. Janette Forte and Laureen Pierre, “Survey of Forest Use in Region I,” pp. 12-22 in Situation Analysis Indigenous Use of the Forest with Emphasis on Region I, (Amerindian Research Unit, University of Guyana, Georgetown, June 1995).
