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Tradition and Development are conceptually opposed. Where development is characterized by

“modern” times, money, and making work easier through using foreign materials and power tools,

“tradition” is characterized by the “forest” and “culture days”/long-ago—use of local materials, and working collectively. Part I foregrounded the way older people in Surama are apprehensive about development because of the changes it is bringing to ways of being social. At the same time, however, these are historically interrelated categories.

Development, both as it is conceived in Surama and at the national level, took off after the change in Guyanese national policy in 1992. This change in policy also opened the door for foregrounding

“tradition” and “culture” as foreign researchers and policy makers have been interested in

Amerindian knowledge of the forest. Locally, as “culture” and “tradition” are manifested in current development-time, the practices, and objects they frame are re-evaluated and shift to fit more closely with ideas of the past. This happens in two interrelated ways. As new practices and materials become more prominent through the decisions and interactions of various households, previous materials and practices become associated with “tradition”. Then, these older household objects and practices, are repackaged when shared at the community level to further fit the spacio-temporal aspects of “tradition”.60 _{At a wider scale, the relation between the two is more evident.}

Developments in the community, such as the paving of the airstrip, are meant to draw attention to the way Amerindians can “develop” without compromising their own ways of being social. At an even wider scale, national Guyanese policy and development decisions recognize Amerindians as key partners for projects like Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Scheme (part of REDD+). This relies on the recognition of Amerindians as Guyana’s “first residents” and “custodians of the forest”, which

60 _{This analysis is closely tied to Surama Heritage Day in which the tradition, usually found in the household, is}

foregrounded in the community, and made even more traditional. The centre of the community becomes associated with continuity of the past.

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also plays on the association of contemporary Amerindians as grounded in the past. In this way, wider development, in exchange and interaction with Amerindian people in the North Rupununi, contributes to “tradition” as a concept.

National and International attention are not the main motivation for sharing “tradition” and

“culture”. In the household, cassava work, farming, and the ability to negotiate the forest are not done because they are valued as “tradition”, they are part of everyday life. As such, they are part of people’s sociality of sharing and contributing to each other. In Amazonia, this exchange is not about bringing the forest into the community, but extending sociality—family-friend relations—into the forest. It is through this exchange with the forest that people in the community and (otherwise invisible) people in the forest constitute each other. While Amerindians’ ability to conserve the forest draws international attention, local attention is on the forest to create social connections. This is a structured analysis. But it can be seen in daily interactions of local research into “tradition”. Many visiting researchers bring opportunities for local Surama residents to learn (about each other and “others”), earn a salary, and travel. These are not the only motivations for locals to participate in research. My host-family appreciated the research in which they participated and treated it as a further contribution to community sociality. While research may change the context in which practices and objects are shared—being told about bina versus using bina—the repackaging provides an opportunity for this information to be exchanged, and learnt. Makushi hunters who use a gun prepare bow sets for tourists or for Heritage Day, providing an opportunity to their children or grandchildren to learn the skill. Amusing long-ago stories are collected and shared with children and friends, and people find new relevance in old stories, many of which they had never heard before. In this way, the relationships with the past and forest are remade in development at the local level. At the same time, their importance and ubiquity in Surama, in the face of researchers and other outsiders, means that people in Surama mediate the way they are shared with non-Amerindians. Other aspects of Amerindians’ relationship with the forest, such as the existence of dangerous forest beings—kanaimǐ and piai—are not part of this widely shared “tradition”, which further points to the fact that “culture” is not constituted to satisfy outside interest. Kanaimǐ and curare have been hot topics for foreigners interested in Guyanese Amerindians for centuries, perhaps because they have remained so elusive. When researchers ask about these parts of life, they are met with statements of ignorance. Knowing these dangerous interactions with the forest is knowing how to use them, which implies knowing how to kill. As Jean’s comments in this chapter suggest, “civilised” people do not kill, and therefore, do not know about these exchanges. This points to the fact that dangerous knowledge is not only hidden, it may also be ontologically untranslatable to researchers, necessarily

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interested in books, reports, and the like. Contrastingly, dangerous ways of knowing are more closely associated with embodied exchanges. In this way, dangers also associated with the past are kept away from visiting researchers. My discussion of belief in the following two chapters explores this relationship.

People in Surama talk about belief in very similar ways to “culture” and “tradition”. It is associated with the past, and it is a way of presenting certain practices to researchers, in this case potentially dangerous practices. As piai did not seem to be a part of people’s everyday life, I was not very interested in pushing an investigation into this invisible part of being. A few months into fieldwork, however, I overheard Paulette, Vitus, Jolyn, Frank and Scott telling stories before Frank went hunting.

They spoke about bina, how there were different binas that could make one change shapes, turning into a bird or lizard.

“It don’t have bina like that anymore, nah?” Vitus asked (17/04/2015).

“They lose it,” Paulette said.

“Them not pass it on?” Jolyn asked.

Paulette said they knew about some binas, but there were others that let you talk to the spirits, that were not being passed on.

“Yeah, Scott, if you go into the forest without eating pepper you would see them, “Paulette said,

“That is evil spirit. Like Bible say. You would see them, like girl whining on them. But we wouldn’t see them, only you.”

“Pepper is evil spirit?” Scott asked.

“No, you have to take pepper to keep them away,” the group replied.

“You have to burn your mouth with pepper,” Auntie Paulette began, “Put it in your eye.” “And your beatie [anus],” Vitus said humorously, and Paulette agreed with him.

“Kamash say that them rocks there, by he, is Oma,” Frank said, and then repeated, looking for a response from his mother.

“That is Ishkirang barbecue post,” Paulette said.

‘For real?!!” Jolyn asked in a sharp upwards tone.

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“Remember he did find them rocks and move them there when he was building his house,” Frank said.

“They fix it up,” Paulette said, “Remember it had malaria coming to Surama, bad, bad malaria, plenty. Mogo Malcom fix up and he say a prayer there. Why you think malaria ease up?”

Here bina, invisible or ‘mystical’ knowledge, is spoken about. It is made practical, replaceable perhaps by more recent developments. The piai that Malcom practices is made to seem like a kind of “tradition”, part of the past, however, It is not passed down the same way as tradition.

I had not heard this story of malaria, but it seemed to contrast to the way that people often spoke about Malcom, as a remnant of a past without power. In retrospect, however, my misunderstanding of the way people spoke about Malcom had to do with a misreading of what people meant by belief. I remembered one of my first days in Surama, we were in Paulette’s kitchen and she asked about a tattoo I had. I told her it was a shaman who could turn into a crow. She had a concerned look on her face, and told me that Mogo Malcom said he could turn into a humming bird.

“That is what he trick me. He also turns into an eagle, but it’s how he tricks,” She said with a light chuckle (30/08/2014).

She went on to tell me about a time Laura Mentore went to the piai-man. Laura had a pain in her knee that would not go away. Paulette said Laura told her about how Malcom sucked out the pain.61

“I tell she it’s trick. ‘He trick you, and now you trick me,’ I tell she,” Paulette said with a laugh.

“What Laura said?”

“She said, you have to believe.”

61 _{Laura Mentore’s account of this story can be read in her 2005 article in Anthropology and Humanism, “The}

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