Vishana Gajadhar

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The Department of Creative and Festival Arts hosted The Old yard which is an event that portrays cultural history and a carnival masquerade. In keeping with the tradition in this course, students were challenged to research various topics and cultural themes and present a “Mas” for Jouvert/Jouvay as part of the Department’s Jouvay Ayiti Band. This year, Jouvay Ayiti’s presentation was called “Arandara Ponahara”. Arandara Ponahara celebrates the regaining of indigenous culture as essential to Caribbean identity.

The class of Critical Readings in Caribbean Arts and Culture II were given different tribes to base their costume and research on. My fellow group members and I chose a tribe called “Wai Wai”. The Wai Wai is one of nine native Amerindian tribes in Guyana. It is one of the smallest Amerindian groups with a population estimated at around 1137 people and are a nomadic hunting and gathering group. They are located in small remote villages in the southernmost tropical forest of Guyana. This tribe is artistic with skills of making beautiful beaded aprons and necklaces and other crafts such as pottery, baskets, woven combs, bone flutes, bows and arrows, blow guns and graters.

Being inspired by the native clothing and traditional dances of the Wai Wai people, my group members and I started off with some sketches.

We found that including Wai Wai hunters were very important. According to the explorer, Sir Robert Schomburgk, “The Woyawais are great hunters…” My group members and I then came up with some ideas to incorporate organic and found materials to create the tribe costumes.

Coconut leaves were plaited into a skirt for a male Wai Wai hunter.

Then the Hunter’s head piece was made out of paper, coconut fibers and cloth. We created a paper crown structure which was then covered by cloth and strips of coconut fibers. Since we were requested to use found objects to make our costumes we used paper and painted it to manipulate feathers.

Paper were cut into “leaf” like shapes and sliced on the outermost edges. After the paper feathers were painted, skews were added to the middle of it.

Male hunter’s head piece:

Beads were made out of flour, water and salt. It came out really great. These were used for the necklaces,  hands and foot pieces.

                             

Hand pieces were created using brown cotton, flour beads and coconut fibers. Wire mesh was used as a base of an arm band. Twine was used to weave through the mesh. Then paper feathers and flour beads were added.

The Wai Wai are known for their weaving and so too we were inspired to weave twine and brown cotton. We added it to the base of the arm piece.

The spear head was made out of card board then was painted. The body of the spear was an old piece of broom stick wood and we weaved cloth and twine at the top of it to add a ‘tribal’ look.

Clay beads and a square intricately beaded pendant were made from the inspiration of Wai Wai necklaces. After it was painted.

Woven strings were added to the corners of the pendant.

We were advice to include a female hunter by a lecturer. For the female hunter, the painted clay beads were attached to her woven head piece. Some were also used for her chain.

Women play a vital role in the Wai-Wai culture. The Wai Wai men’s success in terms of wealth and power are dependent on female labor and reproduction. Apart from hunters, the Wai Wai also had gatherers and farmers. Their main farming crops are bitter tapioca (cassava) used to make bread (cassava bread), farina, casareep and drink (pywari and cassiri). They also plant fruit trees, arrow cane and cotton.

The Wai Wai gatherers’ head pieces were woven cloth that was decorated

with feathers.

Brown cotton and crocus bags were used as the skirts for the Wai Wai females. We added makeup to our group members which contributed towards the entire tribal look.

On the day of Old Yard the entire class started of holding hands and dancing in a large circle. The chanting and dancing of our class created rhythm and vibrations that were felt throughout their performance. My group members portrayed the life style of the Wai Wai people. The Wai Wai women was gathering crops, fixing the food and weaving. The performance of the Wai Wai was portraying a male and female hunter that caught and killed an animal. They brought back the animal to the village where it was used as sacrifice to bring good luck to the wai wai people. After they did a ceremonial dance around the sacrifice to end the performance.

I am a past student of the UWI Certificate Visual Arts program which also required performance at Jouvay Ayiti. This would be the second time part taking in this event. This time it was different, we had to perform as one class. Other groups represented different tribes and it was really nice to observe their costumes and their group performances. This course taught us about the rich culture of the First Nations people in the Caribbean and I am very thankful for this knowledge and experience. I am sure that after the public saw our class costumes and performances, people are appreciating and recognizing the historical importance of native culture as vital to Caribbean identity.