Indigenous Culture Lessons for Surinamese Schoolchildren

In Suriname, one of ACT’s focus areas is to bring greater awareness of indigenous culture to the capital city of Paramaribo. To do this, we created the Wapono Pakoro Indigenous Day Project. The project’s focus is on knowledge exchange between the Trio and Wayana tribes and schoolchildren in Paramaribo. The project involved educational, hands-on, and showcase events for the schoolchildren.

The event kicked off in July 2010 with three elementary and technical schools in Paramaribo learning about indigenous culture and building scale models of traditional indigenous houses. This project is a follow-up to a recent publication, Wapono Pakoro: Traditional Indigenous Architecture of the Trio and Wayana in Southern Suriname, and is funded by the Dutch Embassy in Suriname, reflecting the theme “respect for different cultures.”

In partnership with an architecture team, indigenous park guards of Kwamalasamutu (an indigenous village in the remote southern interior of the country), held workshops for the technical schools to share their knowledge about materials used to build houses and the indigenous wave-and-bind construction techniques.

For two months, with assistance from ACT staff, children ranging from 9-12 years old and their teachers worked on building a village model. Simultaneously, children of the technical school tested their architecture skills by building three traditional indigenous houses: a clay house, a wooden house, and a bamboo house. The replicas were built at 50 percent scale by students in the 14-18 year age group.

The event wrapped up in August when the house models were on exhibit during the Indigenous Day weekend for all to see. We also invited local artists to share their work focusing on the indigenous people. Paul Woei, a famous Surinamese visual artist, displayed his sculptures and paintings of the nation’s indigenous peoples. Charles Chang, a local photographer and journalist, displayed pictures of the Trio (Suriname) and Xingu (Brazil) tribes.

To capture such a monumental event, we created a DVD which can be viewed by other schools to promote their own cultures. As I write, one replica, the clay hut, as well as one village model have been adopted by the Villa Zapakara children’s museum in Paramaribo.

It was very special to watch these young children work together with indigenous peoples on such an inspiring project. I’ve included pictures of some of the final pieces of work from the project.

Karin Lachmising

Amazon Conservation Team, Suriname

Communication & Information Coordinator