With con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the erec­tion of a stat­ue de­pict­ing one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­dige­nous peo­ples at King's Wharf, San Fer­nan­do, Grand Chief Er­ic Lewis of the First Na­tives Sov­er­eign Na­tion, says it would be bet­ter to mod­i­fy or re­place it.

Grand Chief Lewis and Ch­agua­nas Chief Camil­lus Se­bala in­spect­ed the stat­ue, which is lo­cat­ed along La­dy Hailes Av­enue, and con­clud­ed that it does not ac­cu­rate­ly rep­re­sent any of the tribes.

He said while he ap­pre­ci­ates the de­ci­sion to in­clude First Peo­ples' rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the re­de­vel­op­ment of the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front, he be­lieves there should have been prop­er re­search and con­sul­ta­tion.

He is rec­om­mend­ing that the First Peo­ples cre­ate their own stat­ue and is of­fer­ing to do­nate to the city one of two sev­en-foot struc­tures he al­ready has built.

"i am not con­demn­ing the artist,” he as­sured. “An artist has a cer­tain amount of lib­er­ty when he or she is cre­at­ing his or her work or de­pict­ing it. Per­haps the artist may have used some artis­tic free­dom in try­ing to por­tray some­thing he or she was com­mis­sioned to do.”

“At the same time, we are still here,” he point­ed out, “and we can take the nec­es­sary steps to en­sure that the im­age of our an­ces­tors is cor­rect­ly de­pict­ed and por­trayed to the coun­try."

Grand Chief Lewis al­so is con­cerned that the ma­te­ri­als used in the cur­rent stat­ue are not suit­able for out­door con­di­tions and may de­te­ri­o­rate quick­ly.