Keeping The Faith
THE ONLOOKER
by Robert Sandiford What most people remember about the Arawaks can be summed up thus: they were one of the two early Amerindian tribes to be found in the Caribbean; they were planters of cassava; and they were the mortal enemies of the other tribe, the Caribs. But, as Barbadian Damon Gerard Corrie reminds us in The Arawak Tribal Nation: Children Of The Eagle, Spirit Of The Jaguar (First Nations Publications, 31 pp., paperback), they were and still are a diverse people. Corrie is the fifth Hereditary Paramount Chief and Faithkeeper of the Eagle Clan Arawaks in Guyana. He is the great-great-grandson of Amorotahe Haubariria, the fourth Heriditary Paramount Chief. Considered the greatest Arawak Chief, Amorotahe Haubariria ruled the Pan-Tribal Chiefdom of the upper Demerara river in Guyana from 1841-1897. Corrie, whose family migrated to Barbados in 1924, ascended to his title upon marrying back into the tribe at the age of 19 in 1992 and having a son to carry on the line. Even if “this book is not about historical wrongs, or my life story, it is about the Lokono-Arawaks of today, a people that are increasingly in danger of extinction as a distinct ethnic group in Guyanese society”. Of mixed European and Amerindian heritage, Corrie claims he has no personal ax to grind. “But I must admit,” he continues in his Foreward, “that I have never felt a sense of belonging to – or affection for – the Eurocentric culture I was born into, and grew up in. “On the contrary, I never feel truly understood or accepted outside the presence of my Amerindian people.” It is this special relationship he wishes the reader to understand. “It’s not a thick book,” Corrie says of his effort, “but it makes up in actual fact for what has been around in conjecture. Straight from the people themselves.” The term “Arawaks” comes from the Warrau tribe of the Orinoco, who called the Lokono “aru-acs”, meaning “cassava-eaters”. (Lokono means “the people”, Loko, “one person”.) Although the Lokono were “excellent fishermen and navigators” as well as farmers, their “docility” and “hospitality...never prevented them from defending themselves and their land”. They could be as fierce as the Caribs in battle. Whereas the eagle of the subtitle refers to providence, the jaguar represents the warrior. Women used to play a “vital” role in the Lokono economy. The tribe once had a well-defined system of authority and hierarchy. “But this has been thoroughly destroyed in the name of Christianity,” according to Corrie, who calls the explorers to the New World “European savages”. Assimilation remains a threat. There are lapses in writing style and layout in The Arawak Tribal Nation. Its format – that of a manual – is limiting. The pictures at the end of the book help put faces to key figures. But the reader is left wanting more. Corrie has dedicated his life to “the revival of tribal sovereignty and the re-establishment of tribal governments on the Amerindian Territories in Guyana”. On December 7, he signed a ceremonial Peace Treaty with Karifuna Carib Paramount Chief Hillary Frederick of Dominica on behalf of the Eagle Clan Arawaks. In so doing, he simultaneously ended the 300-year state of war between the two peoples and began another chapter in a lively, fascinating history. • Robert Sandiford is the NATION’s Associate Literary Editor. 
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