ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the policy framework crafted by Walter Roth and used in State dealings with Guyana's indigenous peoples up to the present, and reflects upon the fate of that legislation. It needs restating that the 1910 Ordinance needs to be considered in relation to the colonial context in which it was drawn up and implemented, and not in comparison with contemporary mores. Roth's first official posting in British Guiana in 1907 was as the Government Medical Officer, Magistrate and Protector of Indians in the Pomeroon District, an area that, one century later, demarcates the western-most extent of African and East Indian settlement of the coastal plain. The coastal road ends at the market village named Charity, on the Pomeroon River, which remains the fluvial gateway to the Amerindian peoples of the North West District, who were the subjects of Roth's investigations. The mainstay of the British Guiana economy was plantation production of agricultural commodities located on the coastal plain.
