First Peoples parade in PoS

First Peoples from Australia, Canada, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Suriname and Mexico have joined the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community and Jennifer Cassar, Carib Queen of Arima, for “First Peoples Heritage week - exploring Restitution and Reparatory Justice for Native Genocide and enslavement.”

Contingents arrived on the weekend for the events that began on Monday with a symposium on restitution and reparatory justice at the University of the West Indies, O’Meara Campus. Emmanuel Daniel, who flew some 21 hours from Australia to get to Trinidad told Newsday, “It’s about indigenous peoples from all parts of the world coming together and discussing indigenous rights and having workshops for each other. Most of the indigenous peoples around the world are similar in nature and in similar situations in their own countries. we advise on things where we can achieve a better life for our people in our country.”

His compatriot Dion Drummond said back home they do programmes in the schools teaching children about their song and dance so that they will have a better understanding about them. He said, “without them knowing about us, we get a lot of ignorance and racism so it’s better to educate them to show them that we are all the same, just a different colour. That’s what we do at home when we are not travelling around the world. It’s important that we educate everyone from a young age.”

For this year, thus far Drummond has been to Brazil, Mexico, Trinidad, back to Australia then back to Trinidad. Next month he is off to China. Drummond said Tuesday’s conference was just an exciting day since it gave him the opportunity to observe what everyone had to say.