THE culture of Indigenous people is a significant part of Guyana’s tourism, and President Dr. Irfaan Ali believes that their skill set and cultural expressions should be promoted on bigger platforms across the country.

During a heritage celebration in St. Ignatius, Region Nine on Wednesday, the Head of State emphasised the importance of indigenous architecture, particularly the Benab.

In the hinterland regions of Guyana and a few along the coastline, you can find Benabs, an impressive example of indigenous craftsmanship and native architecture.

Benabs are used as a meeting place for Guyana’s indigenous people. This can be a formal meeting between villagers or informal events such as cultural celebrations, parties and other festivities.

The most well-known Benab in Guyana is the Umana Yana, national monuments, which is located in Georgetown and was originally built by the Wai Wai tribe.

“These Benabs are not only significant for your community, but they are a masterful representation of our eco-tourism product, our culture product, our heritage product,” the President said.

He further stressed the significance of the architecture and what it represents not only for the Indigenous people but for all Guyanese.

“The Benab and the work that goes into creating [it], the teamwork, bringing together the villages, selecting the wood, selecting the leaves is an expression of unity. It’s an expression of coming together. It is not just a shelter from the sun and the rain but it is a meeting point of people. It’s a meeting point for community, where leaders come together to develop ideas, to develop plans, to hold meetings. It’s a point of education, it’s a point of culture.”

He added: “The significance of this Benab is not limited to the structure that we see, we feel and celebrate.”

These towering structures prove the brilliance of environmental engineering by using only locally sourced materials like woods, barks, and vines. These handcrafted marvels are truly remarkable as they can endure the test of time and stand for generations.

The craftsmanship is a seamless blend of tradition and innovation.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BENAB

In a previous publication, Michael Mc Garrell, an advocate for Indigenous people’s rights and a forest conservationist of Chenapou, said: “It’s a meeting place. A place where collective decisions are made. A place to celebrate together. A place where we can look upon each other in a circular setting,”

Mc Garrell stressed that the mere size of the structures and the technology involved in keeping it standing through some of the most adverse weather and environmental conditions, is an engineering feature distinctive to the indigenous people.

In Georgetown, there is the most popular benab, the historic Umana Yana, a national monument situated in Kingston. The original structure dates back to 1972 when 60 Wai-Wai men and their chief, Elka, were brought to the City from their village of Konashen, Rupununi, with core materials to build the benab in time for the Non-Aligned Foreign Ministers Conference in Guyana.

The builders reportedly excavated a circular area of land, around 26.8 metres in diameter, according to reports from that time. The area was levelled and compacted to a smooth hard finish by stomping on the ground in a sort of tribal dance. Sand was first laid on the ground, followed by a concrete foundation slab that reportedly had holes drilled in it for the poles. The structure stood at a height of approximately 55 feet and was constructed from allibanna and manicole palm leaves that were thatched together with wallaba posts that were tied using mukru, turu, and nibbi vines. No nails were used.

It occupied an area of 460 square meters, supposedly making it the largest structure of its kind at that time, designed like the Wai-Wai benabs found deep in Guyana’s interior.

Over the decades since, the benab has hosted scores of high-level meetings and events. Due to deterioration, the initial structure collapsed in 1993 and had to be rebuilt. It was smaller than the first and was subsequently destroyed by fire in September 2014. A third structure was later rebuilt and commissioned in 2016.