Dear Editor,
Please allow me to share some thoughts after having read a letter to the editor: ‘No point in LCDS supporting documents being in Amerindian languages because most Indigenous peoples can’t read them’ (SN, September 6).
The writer also lamented that the Toshaos should not be complaining that adequate consultations on the LCDS were not done because among other activities the planners had skilfully engaged the Toshaos and Village Councillors through an information desk with the expectation that they would complete the consultation process by having this information filtered down to the communities.
The majority of Amerindians in Region 9 mostly hear their traditional Makushi, Wapishana or Wai Wai languages when they are in their mothers’ wombs. It is also the language that they use for communicating and learning prior to attending nursery school.
It is in the nursery schools and then the primary schools that the English language is foisted upon the indigenous kids, because it is seen as the means to be able to pass examinations and participate in the modern world.
So far there has been no sustained attempt to prepare the teachers to teach English as a second language in indigenous schools. The strategy used is to quietly allow the dominant English language to replace the first languages of the indigenous peoples.
However, organizations such as the Makushi Research Unit of the North Rupununi, the Wapichan Literacy Group of the South Rupununi, and missionaries, have been in the forefront of teaching the indigenous peoples to read and write the Makushi and the Wapishana languages.
Not to be outdone some churches have been keeping services, including using written hymns, in the Wapishana, Makushi and Patomona languages.
One has to live in an Amerindian community to experience the excitement, interest, and pride generated when a bilingual document with the indigenous language is available for reading.
Any educator worth his salt would tell you that to facilitate good comprehension and learning one should make maximum use of the first language of a people.
Humans learn or understand concepts and issues when different methodologies are used to facilitate learning. In some instances the facilitators will have to use drama, art, music, dances and stories to get the message across. Bilingual booklets with facts written in adult friendly formats could be used as reference materials. And still in other instances bilingual posters with important messages should be utilized.
I recently attended one village meeting where a village leader was honest to report that he signed a LCDS supporting document at a National Toshaos’ Council meeting in Georgetown, without understanding what was inside it.
Somewhere I read that if learning did not take place it is so because the teacher did not teach.
To unilaterally say that the medium of written indigenous languages should be totally thrown out of the window in any important interaction with the indigenous peoples is to show a lack of understanding of basic principles of learning and of things indigenous.
Yours faithfully,
Vincent Henry
