Preserving our literary heritage – The Amerindian Way of Life
The Late Dr Desrey Fox
The Late Dr Desrey Fox

by Petamber Persaud

(The following is extract of an interview with the late Dr. Desrey Fox, in Georgetown, Guyana, 2002. Dr. Fox was a Linguist. She was also the Co-coordinator of the Amerindian Research Unit, University of Guyana; Curator of the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology and a former Minister in the Ministry of Education)
* Petamber Persaud (PP) – Much of the Amerindian way of life is still embodied in its oral tradition but somewhat hidden away from outsiders.

* Desrey Fox (DF) – As you know the Amerindian languages are not written languages. The Amerindians, for centuries, have always transfer their body of knowledge and every aspect of their life by talking to their children through socialisation and as they do things, as a way of life. So a female child, for example, will have a different form of socialisation because we have different male/female roles. This female child at an early age will be given a knife as the mother sits there sometimes singing to the child, telling stories at the same time. But the process is a hands-on experience for the child who will watch the mother wash, peel and grate the cassava tubers and do likewise.

* (PP) – You touched on two forms of oral tradition – singing and storytelling, expand.

* (DF) – There are some aspects of our sacred life like telling creation stories or in the early hours of the morning, grandmothers/elders teaching spiritual songs to be used before the day begins; some songs that cannot be sung in the public.
The Shaman and the Shaman apprentice – it takes a long time for this process, in olden days, it took five to ten years, even ten to fifteen years. Today the time is taken up by so many things so I don’t think the role of the piaman is as prominent as it used to be. Except to say when you go into the villages, you will see a Seven Days Adventist village or an Anglican village or Catholic or Wesleyans and the Amerindians will call themselves that but beyond that what people don’t know was that the Amerindians still practice these things. For instance, in my village, [Waramadong], our village has been declared a Seven Days Adventist Village since the 1920s so you cannot do certain things. Half of our way of life was literally overrun but at the same time we have satellite communities where people practice these thing.
* (PP) – I now understand why Jean La Rose is having a problem with integration, the integration movement of the Amerindian into mainstream society…
* (DF) – The whole concept of integration assumes at some point that we are at the same level with the mainstream and we are now ready to….
* (PP) – You are now part of the mainstream of Guyanese society, have you lost any of oral tradition?
* (DF) – No, in fact, it has reinforced it…
* (PP) – Do you practice your tradition at home?
* (DF) – Yes, that is why I am called upon to perform incantation in public
* (PP) – Storytelling session?
* (DF) – Not for the past five years as I was away at university but because I was doing field work in the same village I was born in I was working on four Akawaios speech genres for my dissertation so I looked at personal narratives, praising rhymes for children, healing chants and storytelling so I had to be there for those sessions. For me that was most fascinating, I enjoyed every moment of it, collecting stories from my elders….
* (PP) – Were those stories published?
* (DF) – In my dissertation. I have at least three hundred pages of text that I’ve collected that is storytelling and praising rhymes – there are different rhymes for males and females. As for personal narratives and healing chants, I examined those because I was looking at the ways of speaking of the Akawaio people – what governs speaking, the rules, norms, regulations. Apart from that what are the linguist variations of the language used, ritual language as against everyday usage as oppose to a philosophy of how they see language – what is language for them, how do they interpret it, what is a word, how do they categorise they world, and interpret their world. So this was like the theme of my approach to my linguistic work.
* (PP) – The outside world is creeping in on the Amerindian world, encroaching, is the Amerindian comfortable with this?
* (DF) – The encroachment started a long time ago – 1492 – and even before that we have had encroachment from other groups of people but the Amerindians have done pretty well for themselves…the problem is that you want us to fall into line as oppose to what we want. And maybe we have been taught that way, consciously or unconsciously, we have being moving the way we are. And people are still shocked, for example, a question like ok, Dr Fox, you are the first Amerindian woman to become a doctor, how do you feel about that. How am I supposed to feel – why am I the first female doctor in over five hundred years…How am I supposed to feel. Why am I the first female doctor in 500 years, what is the problem with than!
WHAT’S HAPPENING:
* Modern Intellectual Property Legislation to be enacted.
* The Guyana Annual Magazine 2014-2015 issue in now available at Guyenterprise Ltd., Lance Gibbs and Irving Streets, Tel # 226-9874, the National Library, Austin’s Book Service, and from yours truly.

** (Persons wishing to respond to this author can telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com)

 

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