Makushi language project launched
Stabroek News
April 2, 2003
The Makushi Languages Project for the teaching of the Makushi language at several Rupununi schools was formally handed over to teachers at the Cheddi Jagan Research Institute last week.
The handing over coincided with the launching of a 19-page primer ‘Let’s Read and Write Makushi’ - a transition manual by Miriam Abbott with illustrations by the Makushi Teachers’ Language Workshops and Anil Roberts, student of the Burrowes School of Art, as well as a `My First Grammar Book’ for Makushi-English speakers.
Moderator for the programme, Vanda Radzik said that the activity followed the completion of a series of four workshops dedicated to the teaching of Makushi literacy in primary and nursery schools in the Rupununi.
The workshops for 26 teachers and Makushi researchers were held from March 20 to March 24 at the Bina Hill Institute for education, Research and Development in Annai, North Rupununi.
The first Makushi dictionary is also being developed but it will be a tri-lingual one, that is Makushi, English and Portuguese to cater for around 9,000 Makushi people living in Guyana and the 14,000 in Brazil. Venezuela also has a Makushi population.
The author of the Makushi primer, Abbott, began her research as a nurse in the seventies working among the Makushis in Brazil then later on in Guyana.
Deputy Chief Education Officer, Romeo McAdam saw the project as a practical approach to improving education in Guyana.
Minister of Amerindian Affairs, Carolyn Rodrigues congratulated those who piloted the Makushi, Wapishiana and Arawak languages projects noting that similar research was being conducted with the Akawaio and Carib languages.
For decades, Amerindian groups have lobbied for teaching in Amerindian communities to be done in the languages spoken by the Amerindians.
Makushi is one of nine Amerindian languages spoken in Guyana. It is one of about five or six including the Wapishiana, Carib, Akawaio and Wai-Wai, which are widely spoken in the various indigenous communities.
According to Radzik, the Makushi language is estimated to have been spoken for over 9,000 years in the Rupununi-Roraima regions of Guyana and Brazil. Through the years it has been transmitted orally, outside of the formal education because its use was prohibited in schools.
Present at the launching were a number of persons who were associated, at the local level, with the project including the Makushi Research Unit and the North Rupununi District Develop-ment Board, the Amerindian Research Unit (ARU) of the University of Guyana, the ministries of education, and Amerindian affairs, the Iwokrama Centre and the Guyana Book Foundation.
International support was provided by the author, Abbott, through her specialist knowledge; and the Canadian International Development Agency through the Canadian Organisation for Develop-ment through Education and by the British Department For International Development (DFID) which provided a grant to Iwokrama for sustainable human development.
Giving a background to the project, researcher Janet Forte, said that when the project began in 1995 it started with seven women and one man.
They met in different villages spending a week each time interacting with children and villagers.
The original group, she recalled had only “a rudimentary education and nothing more”.
Even when the funding provided by the Global Environmental Facility through Iwokrama ended, Forte said that the process of the recovery of pride in the language continued.
She said that they had discovered that the names of much of the flora and fauna now used in the English language had their origins in the indigenous language.
Forte feels that bi-lingual education is not just a means to halting the extinction of the indigenous languages but it also enhances the quality of education available to indigenous children.
Noting that the advantages of bi-lingual education are now accepted globally by educators and the community alike, she said that studies had shown that children who were introduced to education through the medium of their native language, performed better in national examinations.
The Makushi Language Project follows on the work piloted by Canon John Bennett who compiled the English Arawak Dictionary and book of grammar on the languages, as well as those done in Wapishiana bilingual education in Guyana.
The Wapishiana programme began in 1967 to 1974 with Frances Tracy and continued with Beverly Dawson from 1974, along with other linguists based in the South savannahs, and the Wapishiana Writers Work-shop, a core of Wapishiana teachers who are promoting Wapishiana literacy in their schools and communities. There are now a number of publications in Wapishiana. (Miranda La Rose)
