The Iwokrama International Centre (IIC), in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, launched a ‘Travelling Exhibition’ at the Guyana National Museum.
The exhibition, which opened today also saw partnership from the Newcastle University, UK and the North Rupununi District Development Board (NRDDB). The project has been on-going since 2010, and is titled ‘En-compass – an international diamond of cultural dissemination, capacity building with countries from the North, East, South and West’.
This project is more or less linked to the efforts by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport to promote and preserve the indigenous culture particularly the languages. This focus has seen the MCYS facilitating the compilation of the languages, and the planning of an Indigenous Song Festival. In this regard, the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony, while addressing the gathering at the National Museum, emphasized that the MCYS is pleased to support such initiatives.
The Minister recognized the links between the cultures, and noted that because of the distances separating the countries those experiences were not easily shared however “this project offered that unique opportunity for us to share our experiences and learn from each other,” he said.
Minister Anthony expressed the hope that the EU would see this initiative as just the start and would continue to facilitate such a peculiar sharing process.
“We have to do more for ourselves, and one of the things we can do more of is we need to promote our indigenous culture a little bit more,” he emphasized. The Minister stated that while talks are going on and activities occurring in the villages, there are many people who are still unaware of such.
“When you think of the richness of the languages that we have, it is unprecedented for a small country to have at least nine indigenous languages but what we have found over the years, because very little attention has been placed on these languages, that the language speaking groups are dwindling and if we do not do something about it, it will disappear altogether,” the Minister advanced. He was making reference to the UNESCO website which indicates that Guyana’s indigenous languages are endangered.
The Ministry and the University of Guyana’s Amerindian Research Unit has started in a modest way by compiling seven dictionaries and several grammar books. Minister Anthony stated that the loss of the indigenous languages would not be a loss to Guyana alone but the global community as well hence the need for a more proactive programme to preserve the languages which play an important role in the indigenous peoples’ identity.
While presenting the overview of the project, Dr. Raquel Thomas-Caesar explained that the project is focused on heritage management and preservation in Guyana (North Rupununi), Kenya, China (Hainan Province) and Newcastle, UK.
The key purposes of the project are to strengthen local indigenous culture through increasing access to intangible and tangible cultural heritage expressions, products and services in China, Kenya (and Anglophone Africa) and Guyana and to encourage improved management and safeguarding of these resources.
She added that these issues have taken on an added urgency in the increasingly fast globalising world in which we live, especially because dominant cultural expressions, products and services have tended to become internationalised to the detriment of local cultural diversity.
Dr. Thomas-Caesar highlighted that the outcomes from the project were exchange visits of heritage and culture experts (2010 to 2011). Guyana was represented by Glendon Allicock (Music and Culture specialist), Benita Roberts (Makushi Researcher and culture specialist) and, Ozzie Hussein (renowned Sculptor). The three visited Newcastle, China and Kenya. And in return the teams from Kenya, China and Newcastle came to Guyana (North Rupununi) as well.
Another outcome was the hosting of internal country workshops on heritage. The Guyana workshop was held in the North Rupununi in December 2011.
And the last outcome was the successful achievement of Masters Degrees in Heritage Education and Management from Newcastle University by three indigenous Guyanese. They were Anil Roberts, Sabanto Tokoroho (Grace Roberts) and Guy Marco.
Additionally, the partners in collaboration with the Amerindian Research Unit, University of Guyana (UG), will be hosting a workshop on Heritage Management on November 27, 2014 at the Biodiversity Centre, University of Guyana. The workshop will focus on language, communicating cultural heritage, documentation and preservation. Techniques of participatory videos and photo stories as methods to preserve culture will be discussed.
Head of European Union Delegation to Guyana Ambassador Robert Kopecký, in his remarks recognized the uniqueness of the North Rupununi.
He emphasized that the project was not funded by the EU Delegation based in Guyana but was spearheaded by the Head Office, and seeks to highlight the preservation of indigenous culture globally hence the involvement of groups from Guyana, Africa and China.
Glendon Allicock, one of the participants of the En-Compass project, shared his experience of travelling to Kenya and Hi Nang in China. He said that the experience was very valuable and the most memorable thing was that cassava is being processed in the same way in Guyana, Kenya and Hainan. However, a group from Hi Nang visited the North Rupununi, they were exposed to the variety of products Guyana’s indigenous people get from the cassava – these include cassava bread, farine and cassreep, among others.
Allicock noted that the indigenous languages are disappearing globally and not just in Guyana. In this regard, he called on the nine indigenous nations, in Guyana, to stand up for who they are.
The overall objectives of the project are to strengthen local cultural expressions, production and services; improve access to culture, dissemination of culture; and support protection of cultural heritage in imminent danger.