September is celebrated as Amerindian Heritage Month in Guyana and there is an unfathomable depth of priceless heritage to celebrate. Of all Caribbean nations, the two mainland territories of Guyana and Belize have the greatest store of extant monuments of ancient Amerindian civilisations in the whole region, and of the two, Guyana is the richer. Among the Anglophone islands, Jamaica, Trinidad and St Vincent claim and highlight notable Arawak and Carib identities, but these are historical and not supported by a surviving population of any significance.
By contrast, in Guyana there is a developed tradition during the first week of September, a mini-festival in which Amerindian people from almost all interior regions gather at a makeshift village in Georgetown. They take with them tangible and intangible vestiges of their heritage. These include stage performances of music and dance, items of traditional medicine, artifacts such as basketry and a wide range of crafts, an infinite variety of food items, and drinks, including famed alcoholic blends for exhibition and sale.
This week begins with an opening by the nation’s president and other official interventions, after which it is overtaken by entertainment, exhibitions, culture, and commerce. It virtually explodes into nightly activity, driven by stage performances which can sometimes be instructive. It is an interesting display of indigenous culture, mainly the popular forms of dance music, led by the forro, a rhythm of strong Latin American influence.
Occasionally there are dance performances of the more traditional types with insights into the various cultures of different Amerindian nations in the interior regions of Guyana. Occasionally, as well, there are stories and commentary that reveal priceless tidbits about people, places and cultures. One will not get very full studies of these, and what is exhibited is far from thorough, but the revelations when they come, are invaluable since very little of them are seen or heard on the Guyana coast.
The simulated village during this week is a marketplace. Artists and artisans from various hinterland communities take a variety of craftwork, some utility pro-ducts, others ornamental, but all indi-genous art and crafts that will not be available elsewhere. Some are unique to particular nations. There are other commodities representing coastland expectations of interior traditions such as bush medicine. But by far the top priority items are food and drink. It is a very rare occasion for coastlanders to get traditional indigenous cuisine, especially wild meat, delicacies for which Amerindian communities are famed. The alcoholic drinks, most of them from fermented cassava, are in abundance in the village. Buyers can take away bottles of them, but they come in very handy for nightly entertainment and revelry throughout the week.
It need not be said that all of this has been muted since the advance of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are no village activities this year and there are other means to celebrate the heritage. It might be surprising to learn that one of these is actually perennially available and does not need this annual event to be accessed.
I refer to oral literature. Of all the oral literatures of Guyana, Amerindian folk-tales are the richest, the most abundant and the best preserved. Tales, legends and myths of the Amerindians make up the largest store of Guyanese folk tales that exist. Generally, such stories belong to the oral traditions and were once part of traditional culture. But the Guyanese story-telling traditions have faded, some are extinct and many of the stories are nearly lost.
This is the case with African lore. Guyanese folktales of African derivation are hard to find in the field because villagers have either forgotten them, never learnt them, or are reluctant to impart what they know. Storytelling has not survived as a pastime among villagers, and so tales are being lost along with the tradition.
It is not much better among the East Indians who, likewise, have a much reduced tradition. Folktales out of Indian culture are rare for much the same reasons as among the Black population. When such stories are found in the field they are priceless gems, and one common factor among both ethnic groups is the very strong influence of Europe and especially, of the fairy tales. Stories of Anansi or of Balgobin are no longer common currency in Guyana.
The survival of Amerindian tales are also dependent on the storytelling traditions. They are often tied to indigenous languages, most of which are moribund, and it is known that as much as a deep vein of culture and tradition enriches Guyana’s Amerindian heritage, the ancient ethnic traditions are threatened.
Yet the oral literature of Guyana’s Amerindians is the strongest of all cultural vestiges in the nation. Stories still exist in the interior villages, but those are not what we depend on to assess the great wealth of indigenous tales that is available and accessible today. The body of evidence can be found in the considerable volumes of Amerindian oral traditions, culture, spirituality and beliefs that have been collected, documented and published over the past two centuries by colonial officials, anthropologists, explorers, botanists, missionaries and others. These researchers, visitors and officials were not only or not primarily interested in stories, but they collected them along with a variety of other material.
They include Rev William Henry Brett, an English missionary who spent some 40 years in South America, and published Legends and Myths of the Aboriginal Indians of British Guiana in 1880. William Hillhouse lived among the Amerindians in British Guiana between 1815 and 1840, and his account of that experience was captured in Indian Notices: or Sketches of the Habits, Characters, Languages, Superstitions, Soils and Climate of the Several Nations. The book was edited and introduced by Prof Sister Mary Noel Menezes of UG in a 1978 reprint. Sir Everard Im Thurn was a botanist and photographer who was Curator of the British Guiana Museum between 1877 and 1882. Following travels to Mount Roraima, he published Among the Indians of Guiana, Being Sketches, Chiefly Anthropologic, from the Interior of British Guiana in 1887.
These works continued to appear in the twentieth century. Chief among the authors was Walter E Roth, who served as a colonial administrator in British Guiana early in the century. His main publication on this subject was An Inquiry Into The Animism and Folklore of the Guiana Indians (1915). It was reprinted among the Guyana Classics by the Caribbean Press with an introduction by Janette Bulkan in 2014. Among the several publications of Audrey Butt Colson Professor of Oxford University, are an article “The Akawaio Shaman” (1977), and a publication of the Amerindian Research Unit at the University of Guyana – Fr Cary-Elwes SJ and the Alleluia Indians (1998).
After Rev Brett in the nineteenth century, there were others whose focus was specifically the tales and legends. One of these was Dorothy Muriel Bland St Aubyn, a colonial public servant born in Guyana but who also served in British Honduras (now Belize) and Trinidad. In 2005, Demerara Mutual Life Assurance Society published a calendar which featured 12 stories collected and edited by St Aubyn in what was titled Amerindian Folktales from the Caribbean”. Then there were the collections of Ambassador Odeen Ishmael, a Guyanese diplomat who served in the Middle East. He published Amerindian Legends of Guyana (1995), and Guyana Legends: Folk Tales of the Indigenous Amerindians (2011),
This list was most recently fortified by a volume titled 33 Amerindian Tales from the North Rupununi collected by Geraud De Ville of the Open University as a part of his PhD research in 2016. This group of tales represent stories that are currently in circulation among the Guyanese Amerindian population. This is somewhat different from those collected a century ago.
These several volumes have made it possible to get an insight into the amazing range and varieties of Amerindian folktales originating in Guyana. Whether or not people are still telling them to each other, they confirm the entrenched position of Amerindian folktales in the literature of Guyana.
