Mainstay/Whyaka declared 2022 heritage village

The Region Two indigenous community of Mainstay/ Whyaka has been selected as this year’s heritage village as the annual September celebrations for Amerindian Heritage Month make a grand return in coming weeks.

A suite of activities, including cultural and sporting events, are held throughout the month but those activities were curtailed over the past two years because of restrictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“September month will bring a whole package of what the Amerindian traditional knowledge is about, what the culture is about and what the traditional life is like,” Minister of Amerindian Affairs Pauline Sukhai said at the month of activities’ launch on Tuesday.

Importantly, the theme for this year’s festivities is: “Celebrating our traditional culture while building One Guyana.”

And Minister Sukhai said that theme is not just a slogan but one that seeks to intertwine the government’s agenda of fostering unity across the country with indigenous development.

In fact, she posited that the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) government continues to strive towards guaranteeing that indigenous people are not sidelined from the country’s development.

“… government has the political will to ensure that the indigenous people of this country form part of the one Guyana that is being pursued,” she said.

Furthermore, she reminded the gathering of primarily indigenous people that it was the PPP/C that introduced Amerindian Heritage month and piloted the historic Amerindian Act of 2006.

Building on those efforts, she assured them that indigenous people will not be excluded from Guyana’s ongoing transformation.