Hyarima’s warrior cry

ON OCTOBER 14, 1637, Nepuyo Chief Hyarima and his warriors attacked the Spanish colonists who had enslaved his people and reduced their numbers from thousands to mere hundreds. Hyarima, a shrewd military strategist and leader, actually formed alliances with indigenous peoples in other islands, and joined forces with the Dutch with the aim of ending the tyranny of the Spaniards who controlled the country.

On that fateful day, Hyarima and his army attacked St Joseph, the main Spanish settlement at the time, burning the church and other buildings, taking many Spanish lives. The definitive military strike led by Hyarima forced the Spaniards to flee in terror, and history documents that they were never able to re-establish control of this area.

This act of defiance is commemorated every October by the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community located in Arima as part of their First Peoples Heritage Week.

A statue of Hyarima at the entrance to Arima stands in permanent memory to our warrior hero.

But it is not enough.

Indigenous peoples all over the world, and in TT, continue to struggle for recognition and respect. Earlier this week, representatives of First Nations from as far away as Australia walked in peaceful procession past the Red House in Port-of-Spain, where bones of our indigenous ancestors were discovered. Their feathers, nation clothing, music and chants, while beautiful, tell only part of the story.

In recent times, indigenous peoples from various nations have battled to reclaim their dignity, their land and their sense of who they are. For instance, indigenous peoples rightly prefer the term First Peoples or First Nations, as the word “Indian” first came into use because Christopher Columbus thought he had arrived in the “East Indies”. (Incidentally, this is also why we should not be referring to ourselves as West Indians, but that’s for another column.) Still, there has been some progress.

In 2007, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples strengthened the move towards global recognition of some 370 million indigenous peoples in 90 countries. Recently, the Barack Obama administration agreed to pay the Navajo peoples some US$554 million in settlement of a long-standing claim that the US Government mismanaged funds and resources on tribal land that it held in trust. Additionally, a law has been passed removing offensive terms such as “Indian” from official US documents.

In TT, the First Peoples of Arima were finally able to get 25 acres of land to be used for heritage, tourism and community purposes.

They continue to lobby for a national holiday to commemorate their heritage, and for other tangible forms of recognition.

Certainly, it is important to teach our young people about Hyarima, Banwari man and indigenous customs and practices; about Karina and Arauca, not Carib and Arawak. This is done to an extent, but as usual, our colonial style of education has not worked out how to make Hyarima live, or to how to truly demonstrate the relevance of our First Peoples to current times.

Throughout the ages, indigenous peoples sacrificed their lives for freedom and self-worth. Yet in many ways, First Peoples remain on the outside of our societies, curious reminders of another time.

Until we truly reintegrate them and treat them with respect, our world will not be balanced and the warrior yell of Hyarima and others like him will continue to reverberate across time.

D a r a Healy is a performance artist and founder of the NGO, the Indigenous Creative Arts Network – ICAN