When white doctors walked into Camopi, a majority Indigenous town in French Guiana near the border with Brazil, townspeople felt worry instead of relief. With French Guiana facing a wave of coronavirus infections, the doctors from the French mainland were there to administer tests and treat the sick. “There is still in the minds the time of colonization and the havoc wreaked by viruses brought by colonizers,” Jean-Philippe Chambrier, a member of the Arawak tribe and representative of Indigenous communities in French Guiana, told The Associated Press.
When white doctors walked into Camopi, a majority Indigenous town in French Guiana near the border with Brazil, townspeople felt worry instead of relief. With French Guiana facing a wave of coronavirus infections, the doctors from the French mainland were there to administer tests and treat the sick. “There is still in the minds the time of colonization and the havoc wreaked by viruses brought by colonizers,” Jean-Philippe Chambrier, a member of the Arawak tribe and representative of Indigenous communities in French Guiana, told The Associated Press.