As we continue to celebrate Amerindian Heritage Month, today we focus on one Amerindian woman who represented Guyana on the international scene in making some indigenous delicacies just recently at a conference overseas.

Monique Sarius hails from an Amerindian village of Orealla Mission, an Indigenous community in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne), on the Corentyne River.
Sarius sat down with the Pepperpot Magazine to talk about her involvement in making one of the Amerindian delicacies, cassava bread with a group of Amerindians from Orealla.

“So, some of the work that I have done is on cultural preservation, and this is for cultural and traditional knowledge, I have done this work in my home community of Orealla, and I have been focusing on mainly four skills: cassava bread making, cassareep making, fishing, matapee making, but we also diversify to sifter making,” Sarius told Pepperpot.

She explained that a workshop was done on working with dalebana leaves, which are used for roofing of Amerindian huts, benabs, etc.

She noted that the leaves for the Umana Yana roofing were used by the Wai–Wai, but the ones used in Orealla are quite different in pattern.

Monique shared that even though there are similarities among the Amerindian cultures and peoples, there are also differences as well. She outlined that she has worked on this project that was funded by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport with two other persons.

What occurs in a traditional Indigenous Community?

Monique shared that knowledge and the know-how of skills are not necessarily taught by the older generation of people who are of indigenous descent, but how one learns is by working alongside the older Amerindian people.

“You learn by doing, so when they are making the cassava bread, for example, you help. When it is harvested from the farm, everyone will sit around in a circle. It is usually your grandmother who teaches you this. So, you will sit with her with a knife and you will scrape the outer layer of the cassava. You cannot peel it off because if you do that, it will be too smooth. If it is too smooth, as you are grating the cassava now, it will be too slippery, so you have to go through the process,” Monique said.

Monique explained that the juice is extracted after it is grated. The juice is used to make cassava water, as some call it, but back home in Orealla, it is known as kahailee or Tuma, which is what it is known in the capital city.

In the workshop, Monique disclosed that all the participants made their cassava bread for the first time.

She noted that the young ones had a greater appreciation for making these things, so they shouldn’t take their culture for granted and if they want to enjoy a simple meal of cassava bread with fish, it calls for hard work.

She believes that the process of making these delicacies can be improved while still maintaining the traditional way.

“I would not say that we should keep it this way all the time, we do need the traditional way, while we look for alternative ways of making our jobs easier and faster, then it might be better for us, you can utilise the remaining time to do other things,“ she said.

The Making of the Matapee

Monique shared that for this process, the straw has to be split and weaved in a particular manner. If not, it can result in producing spoils. If too many gaps are closed, then the cassava can be properly extracted.

But as she explained, the process of making cassava bread is quite tedious and intricate to produce a great product, maybe according to her, this process happened thousands of years ago and has been brought to where it is today.

She believes that there must be an effort by all indigenous people to look back at our traditions and practices and a greater appreciation by young Amerindians to see what was before and modernise it while at the same time keeping the traditions or the old-time method but have an intensity to move forward to create much more than their ancestors and forefathers who set the pace.