AFTER having been successful in the Secondary Schools Entrance Examination (SSEE) in Guyana, Lenox Schuman won a Government Hinterland Scholarship and he left his home in St. Cuthbert’s Mission to attend North Georgetown Secondary School until his family left Guyana in 1990.

He is reportedly the only Amerindian airline pilot from Guyana currently living and working abroad.

He attended Confederation College of Applied Arts and Technology where he graduated with a Business Diploma and a Canadian Commercial Pilot’s Licence in 1999.

Since then he has worked for a variety of companies in Canada that saw him flying from the Canadian Arctic region to Toronto.

He is currently flying out of Pearson International Airport for a company called Air Georgian. Ninety-nine percent of that company’s flights are Air Canada connections and are governed by Air Canada’s mode of operations under its own operations certificate.

St. Cuthbert’s Mission was originally called Pakuri until the Anglican Church founded a Mission there, calling it St. Cuthbert’s Mission. It was founded on St. Cuthbert’s Day in 1889.

According to Lenox, the chiefhood could be traced back to his great-great-grandfather and was handed down to a long lineage of family members, including his father, who was the Chief for eight years.

The family left Guyana in 1990, but has periodically returned to contribute to the community in a variety of ways – at least twice annually.

When he fell in love with a Canadian girl, Amanda, they decided that they would return to his home village and get married in the traditional way.

Lenox says that the traditional Amerindian union has never been done in an inter-racial setting, making it a first in the history of the indigenous Peoples of Guyana. That is not to say that there have never been inter-racial weddings, but nothing on a cultural and traditional level as was done by Lenox and Amanda. Lenox described the rites of passage as follows:

“To prove myself a man and worthy of taking a woman, it was required of me to stand in an ant nest without flinching. After that, the venom from the ants would cause me to hallucinate, which would be interpreted as my vision in which my sacred animal would come to me. After the vision, it was required that I hunt and prove myself as a good provider and show my ability to provide for a wife. In this proving ground, I had to provide my kill to the head of Amanda’s household and if it was acceptable and they took it, it meant that they approved and that I could have Amanda. The ferocity of the kill usually dictated the bride which one is eligible to take. A leopard would allow me to take any daughter of the recipient family, while an easier kill would have them dictate which of the daughters I’d be able to take. The fiercer the kill, the more worthy I am of the prized daughter and so on.

After they accept the kill and I take my bride, she is then dressed traditionally to show her acceptance into our tribe and we eat, drink and dance to celebrate.

There are some other procedural tidbits in there, like my dad asking on my behalf to make sure she is of the age of puberty before I present my offering, and a red band being moved from my left bicep (shows eligible male status) muscle to my wrist after my woman has been accepted into the tribe (shows manhood after taking a woman). The Chief also had to approve of the union.

After the traditional union, we did the conventional nuptials. All of my older family members have been married in Canada and none of my cousins were able to make the wedding. Also, a traditional union ceremony in Canada would be near-impossible because of the rites of passage and everything that it entailed, which is why we decided to do it in Guyana.”

Lennox says that it is his intention to take a few years off from flying to return to Guyana and ultimately make a contribution to the dynamics of St. Cuthbert’s Mission in the form of public service. He hopes to one day follow the family tradition and become the Chief (Toshao) of that little community. It is also the hope of his wife, Amanda, and himself, that their children will have very good childhood years in St. Cuthbert’s Mission because they are hoping to return to Guyana to live in that community so that their children can enjoy their younger years there.

Amanda also aspires to contribute to the education of the youths of the community as a school teacher in St. Cuthbert’s after they re-migrate.