Uneasy truce

After clashing at a First Peoples protest on Friday, Chief Ricardo Bharath Hernandez, head of the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community, and Shabaka Kambon, director of the Cross Rhodes Freedom Project, have come to an uneasy truce.

The quarrel occurred on the Brian Lara Promenade, Port of Spain during a walk and silent protest staged by the First Peoples Community who were calling for the proper burial of remains found at the Red House during renovations. While there, members of the Cross Rhodes Freedom Project and the Warao tribe arrived, loudly protesting for the removal of the Christopher Columbus statue in Columbus Square.

Hernandez said after the confrontation on Friday, Kambon approached him to apologise for disrupting the First Peoples Community protest. “We felt that was in poor taste because that was the day of our ceremonies, or celebration, and you are coming there and disrupting our peace. I told him he was very disrespectful and there is a way to go about that,” Bharath told Sunday Newsday.

He reiterated that although the First Peoples Community did not glorify Columbus and was not for or against removing the statue, the issue should be documented and formally presented to the authorities.

“If it has to be removed, it must be removed to advance the cause and the issues that face the descendants of indigenous peoples in this land today. If not then it is a useless act.”

He said Kambon seemed very passionate about the genocide of indigenous people with the coming of Columbus but said the statue’s removal would not erase that. “I want to ask the question, ‘Are you as passionate to see some of the concerns of today being addressed?’”

Kambon, however, said his group was provoked to interrupt when Hernandez defended Columbus and argued that people would not be civilized or wear clothes if not for Colombus. “He thanked Columbus for giving us clothes to wear so the clothes indigenous people wear now and trinkets like that are worth over 100 million lives. That was the impression he was giving.”

He said initially many members of the First Peoples Community welcomed them to the demonstration and his group stood silently and listened. He said October 12 was the day Columbus landed in the Caribbean, and was the beginning of the “indigenous holocaust” so many were incensed by Hernandez’s statement and that was when members of his group stepped in and “disrupted” the proceedings.

Kambon said even before Cross Rhodes Freedom Project launched its Columbus Must Fall campaign in June 2017, its members spoke to all the indigenous and a few African stakeholders.

He said all the groups, including the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community and the late Carib Queen, Jennifer Cassar, agreed with the project which would make the Columbus statue an “illegal occupier” of the square and instead erect a monument to 300 years of indigenous resistance.

He said Hernandez participated in the launch but later said in the media that he was not aware what the Cross Rhodes Freedom Project intended to do with the square and denounced the project.

He said Hernandez had gone “against the grain” of the entire international indigenous community and if he wanted to be neutral “he should be more judicious in his statements” or step back completely from the conversation.

Kambon admitted he approached Hernandez after the protest to make peace because of his respect for the office of the chief of any indigenous group. “I felt it was imperative of me, not to apologise for disrupting when he went overboard, ... I apologised to him as an elder. I still appreciate and admire the things he has done for his community and all indigenous people.”

Hernandez yesterday said he was willing to meet and discuss the concerns of various indigenous groups, including that of Kambon, have a national discussion, and to take those issues to the authorities.

Kambon in turn hoped that both groups would do better in the future and not come to that kind of confrontation again.