BEACONS OF EXCELLENCE: THE EDGAR MITTELHOLZER MEMORIAL LECTURES VOLUME 3: 1986-2013 Edited and with an Introduction by Andrew O. Lindsay 1 Edited by Andrew O. Lindsay BEACONS OF EXCELLENCE: THE EDGAR MITTELHOLZER MEMORIAL LECTURES - VOLUME 3: 1986-2013 Preface © Andrew Jefferson-Miles, 2014 Introduction © Andrew O. Lindsay, 2014 Cover design by Peepal Tree Press Cover photograph: Courtesy of Jacqueline Ward All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission. Published by the Caribbean Press. ISBN 978-1-907493-67-6 2 Contents: Tenth Series, 1986: The Arawak Language in Guyanese Culture by John Peter Bennett FOREWORD by Denis Williams .......................................... 3 PREFACE ................................................................................. 5 THE NAMING OF COASTAL GUYANA .......................... 7 ARAWAK SUBSISTENCE AND GUYANESE CULTURE ........................................................................ 14 Eleventh Series, 1987. The Relevance of Myth by George P. Mentore PREFACE ............................................................................... 27 MYTHIC DISCOURSE......................................................... 29 SOCIETY IN SHODEWIKE ................................................ 35 THE SELF CONSTRUCTED ............................................... 43 REFERENCES ....................................................................... 51 Twelfth Series, 1997: Language and National Unity by Richard Allsopp CHAIRMAN’S FOREWORD by Dennis Craig ................ 55 I USING LANGUAGE, A DANGEROUS TOOL .......... 61 II LANGUAGE AND CLASS ............................................ 77 III LANGUAGE FOR TOGETHERNESS ......................... 91 Thirteenth Series, 2009: Denis Williams: Art, Blood and Heritage by Evelyn A. Williams MEMORABILIA II by Denis Williams ............................ 109 LECTURE............................................................................. 111 Fourteenth Series, 2012: Guyanese Literature, Magic Realism and the South American Connection: by Pauline Melville LECTURE............................................................................. 129 3 Fifteenth Series, 2013: Adventures in Form: ‘Outsider’ Fiction in the Caribbean by Jane Bryce LECTURE............................................................................. 145 INDEX TO COMPLETE LECTURE SERIES ................ 165 4 BEACONS OF EXCELLENCE: THE EDGAR MITTELHOLZER MEMORIAL LECTURES VOLUME 3: 1986-2013 Edited and with an Introduction by Andrew O. Lindsay 5 6 Tenth Series, 1986 The Arawak Language in Guyanese Culture John Peter Bennett 1 2 FOREWORD John Peter Bennett was born of Arawak parents at Kabakaburi Arawak Mission on the Pomeroon River on 30 November 1914. He learned English as a foreign language and gained competency “by reading anything that had writing on it.” At twelve years old he left school with the dream of captaining a ship, but was denied employment as a juvenile. After a stint in a logging camp (1936) he worked successively with a road gang and as a tailor, but gave up the tailoring to serve with Rev. Hearst (1939) “who had a lot of books, and that was the attraction.” Rev. Hearst provided a sound academic training, eventually securing him a place at Codrington College, Barbados, to prepare for the priesthood (1946). His return to Guyana as the first Amerindian priest was a source of great pride to the Arawaks in particular, who showered him with gifts acknowledging their pride in seeing the work begun by the illustrious Povett in 1840 continue in able hands. Whilst posted at Waramuri on the Moruka he met the British writer Richard Hart1 who encouraged him to write a dictionary of the Arawak language. This inspiration has guided him ever since, even through a period of prolonged hospitalisation during 1971 in which he was partially paralysed. He was obliged to learn to write with the left hand whilst writing a diary daily with the right to exercise the muscles. By 1976 he could resume work on the word list that would later blossom into his great Arawak-English/English- Arawak Dictionary. The 1984 Mittelholzer series2 is Canon Bennett’s first published presentation of his remarkable life’s work. Denis Williams 3 4 PREFACE This is a revised version of two talks delivered at the Theatre Guild Playhouse, December 1986, as the Tenth Series of the Edgar Mittelholzer Memorial Lectures of the Department of Culture: The Arawak Language in Guyanese Culture. It forms part of a larger work, An Arawak-English, English Arawak Dictionary, to be published in the Quincentennial observances of the Walter Roth Museum. Pronunciation of Arawak words: a as in pat, e as in pet, i as in pit, o as in nose, u as in foot. Stress mark: n as in sing, u as in bird 3 John P. Bennett, Kabakaburi 5 6 THE NAMING OF COASTAL GUYANA Several words are used in Guyana today which are of Arawak origin. School children and school teachers use them; business people use them; travellers use them; and very likely most of these people are not aware that they use Arawak words almost every day. Many places have been named by the Arawaks and although they may be distorted and corrupted, one can still trace their origin. Almost all of the rivers and creeks were named by Arawaks. We may ask, “How were these names given? Why was a place given a particular name?” The answer is quite simple. Places were given the names of the animal, bird, fish, tree, insect or even the stone which was unique to that area or particular location; for example, Seba, Tiger Island, Orealla Creek. Sometimes only one tree was growing in isolation, so the creek or habitation nearby was named after that tree which stood out because it was the only one of its kind. All the rivers in Guyana that flow into the sea, except one, have Arawak names. The one river which does not bear an Arawak name is Waini. The word waini is a Warau word and refers to a bird, a kind of crane which was once plentiful in the lagoon in the mouth of the Waini river. The word really is wauna. We have the correct word in ‘The Wauna Agricultural Scheme’. Let us consider some of the rivers with Arawak names and get to know why they are so called. Perhaps we can begin with Orinoco in Venezuela. It is a big river with a wide mouth. Because of this it was given the Arawak name ori meaning snake and noroco meaning mouth. They named this river Ori Noroco – two words meaning ‘snake’s mouth’ – because they reasoned that only in a snake can one extend the width of the mouth more than normal. Incidentally there is a river in Guyana, a tributary of the New River also called Oronoque, and for the same reason. Next we have Barima. This river flows in Guyana, but empties in Venezuela. In Arawak bará means sea and eima 7 means estuary – two words. As bará connotes ‘rough sea’, it would appear that the mouth of the Barima river was invariably rough and so the people called it ‘rough river mouth’ in Arawak – baraeima. On the right bank of the Barima river is a township called Morawhanna. This name comes from two Arawak words, mora, which refers to a tree and bana, which means leaf. The two words joined together – morabana – make up the name of a poisonous snake that is patterned like a mora leaf. Next we have a village named Barabina. This name is two Arawak words; bará means sea and bina means cure. Therefore barabina means sea-sickness cure. Sometimes you hear people say that bina means ‘a charm’. This is rather misleading. Bina comes from ibihi which word means ‘medicine’. Arawak people refer to ‘charm’ as yaremehi. When you go to Mabaruma by steamer, the steamer stelling is known as Kumaka stelling. Kumaka is Arawak for the silk-cotton tree. There is a river, a branch of Barima river, called Aruka. Now Aruka is the Arawak word aruka which means ‘to cut’. Then Aruka could mean ‘a cut’, ‘a shortcut’ or a ‘division’. Hosororo is made up of two words. Ho means ‘water’ in Warau and sororo means ‘trickling’ in Arawak. Moruka. The name of this river is two Arawak words. Moró is a small fish known as ‘dog fish’ and kan means ‘to’. In the upper Moruka river there are several islands in the savanna which carry Arawak names; for example, Aiomorakabura, Akhoyoro, Thabula and Waromuri. Pomeroon. This word is thought to come from bioroma, a preparation of baked cassava meal moulded into balls and each ball wrapped in a leaf. It was mostly used while travelling long distances and as the associated meat was already cooked, much time was saved. Up to quite recently people referred to the Pomeroon river as Bauroma. In the 1950s, when I was at Bartica, a man from Pomeroon went to live there. He had a boat built and called it Bauroma, to remind him, he said, of the homeland he had left. Nearly all the creeks for something like 100 kilometres up, which are tributaries of the Pomeroon river, have Arawak names. This shows that Arawaks were numerous at one time and inhabited most of the rivers in Guyana. We have arrived 8 at such a conclusion because all the rivers up to a distance of 100 to 200 kilometres from the seacoast have Arawak names. Of all the rivers in the country, Pomeroon must be the one river with the most twisted name. The names of the tributaries are pretty straightforward. For instance there is Arapiako < Arawak arapaio, which is the name of a fish-hawk common in the district at one time. A branch of the Arapaiko is known as Tapakuma < Arawak th’pekoma, and means ‘its calabash’. Pekoma is a small calabash made from an elongated type of gourd.4 Wakapoa creek is on the left bank of the Pomeroon river, near to the sea. Wakapoa is Arawak wakokoa, a type of pigeon common in the savanna. Many islands in the Wakapoa creek have Arawak names. Akiwini (or Akawini) creek. The word Akiwini is two Arawak words: eke, ‘to eat’ and oni, ‘rain’. The meaning of eke oni is ‘eating rain’. The story of how the creek got its name goes like this: after a rainy season the savannahs on both banks were flooded, many people became ill and died.