The world is recognising First Peoples

His Excellency addressed the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community at the Chaguanas Borough Corporation last month and told them that no one race should feel superior or inferior over the other, in much the same way, that the country’s First Peoples must know that they are special to Trinidad and Tobago.

Chief Ricardo Bharath-Hernandez led members of his community to the Chaguanas Borough Corporation hall for a function dubbed “Champion of Peace”, to commemorate October 14 as a day of recognition for the First Peoples’ of this country.

Carmona bemoaned the fact that for a group of people whose ancestors have inhabited this country for hundreds, even way before Christopher Columbus, the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community were only celebrating 26 years of official acceptance of their identity, and 16 years of First Peoples’ day of recognition. “This type of maths simply does not add up.

And when it does,” Carmona said, “it tells a tale of woe and historical obscurity.” Carmona recalled for the community, that his paternal Venezuelan great-grandfather, was a Warao.

The Warao are Amerindians of the First Peoples’ of the Amazonia region along the Venezuelan mainland. The president described, “They are of the genre of cocoa panyol - deep brown, hard-faced men and women who worked on cocoa estates in Erin, Arima, Rancho Quemado and Palo Seco. My DNA is inextricably bound to the First Peoples and I do feel a deep sense of connection and bond to this culture, heritage and sometimes, to your sense of outrage.” Carmona told the Bharath-Hernandez group of the Santa Rosa First People’s community, that he was indeed taken back by the fact the it was cabinet note that gave recognition of this country’s First Peoples, and it did not occur out of the normal flow of what His Excellency described as “the natural flow of circumstances and historical consciousness”.

He said, “Why are the First Peoples’ all over the world subjected to this type of psychological torture, humiliation, marginalisation and denigration of having to fight for their own innate identity and recognition in order to be accepted by the outside world.” Carmona admonished citizens on how the country’s First Peoples are treated, perhaps how they dress, their intricate culture and their lifestyles. And, there might be a sense of hyprocisy, in that people do love their traditional food such as the paemi, arepa and pastelles.

He drew reference to the Maori peoples of New Zealand, where the ‘Haka’ is the war cry of sporting bodies there, and even becoming fully integrated in that society where citizens of all races, do the chant.

Carmona told the gathering that they must not lose hope that their advocacy to earn their rightful place, will bear fruit.