Over the weekend, the Ministry of Rural transformation held four consultations in the south to hear the public's view on the village boundary dispute between Hopkins and Sittee River and Placencia and Seine Beight.
At the Sittee River consultations comments were made by the immigrants who have come to make a home there about the Garinagu who reside in these areas:
James Burks, Immigrant
"I wanna just express that I was a little disturbed last night from some of the comments I heard by elected officials. Not just the audience but elected officials. So they made it abundantly clear that that's a Garifuna community and they were very explicit with that; there was no doubt that that was what they said. So they want to keep their homogenous culture-that's fine and I respect that and they have a right to do that. So I'm asking one question and this is my whole point: why would you want to annex a community that is 95% non-Garifuna? It doesn't make sense to me. So I'm keeping it respectful; I am very concerned, though, with some of the rhetoric. I know investors and expats don't like to hear the term like "we don't recognize legal titles and such" and, frankly, Hopkins can remain, you know, an indigenous community; that's fine. But don't annex a non-indigenous community, it just doesn't make sense."
Dell Morgan, Immigrant
"We received a lot of opinion last night, we received a great deal of emotion but absolutely no facts as to what the history of this is so we as a community can make a fact based opinion or idea of what it's supposed to be so we have nothing to contribute to who should get what, that's not our place."
"Are the people in the disputed area required to vote in Sitee river historically or are they to vote in Hopkins. Cause that says a great deal about what boundaries are because you vote in the community you live in right."
"What are the historical maps of the ratio? The Garifuna claim that they landed on this beach and that the land in that area is theirs I get the script I wasn't here 200 years ago if I remember from the historical photos that I have seen of the development of Sitee point wasn't 99% of that all mangroves? So there was no land for them to have claimed when they landed; it's all mangrove. The land wasnt put in place to be claimed by anybody until it was developed so how can you go back and say historically this was ours when there was nothing there for it to be anybody's."
