When Ovid Williams gained a place at Queen’s College, English was his second language and the communication barrier and home isolation saw him turning to the guitar, which resulted in him becoming one of Guyana’s well-known and accomplished musicians. He persevered with his studies and later became the first indigenous pilot, but today his main focus and biggest concern is keeping the languages and culture alive.
His passion is to revitalize the indigenous languages and promote those that are becoming extinct. So, during the year of Indigenous Peoples languages, which was observed in 2019, Williams was contracted by the then Ministry of Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs and activated six learning groups to assist the younger generation with the languages. But he said the groups need ongoing funding to become sustainable.
“…Because language is such an important thing in everyone’s life, including the indigenous life, all our traditional knowledge, all our customs, our architecture, our music, our culinary art and our whole way of life is captured within the language. And so when we lose our language we lose the whole culture. So it is important that we capture it and maintain it,” he told Stabroek Weekend.
