The school where indigenous youth learn about their land

Incubating indigenous knowledge

The Bina Hill Institute was established in 2001, spearheaded bySydney Allicock, who today is Guyana’s minister for indigenous peoples’ affairs. Born and raised in the Rupununi, he recognized that graduates heading to the capital city, Georgetown, had a tendency to become disconnected from their indigenous roots.

When that happens, Allicock told Mongabay, “You’ve lost a person, a resource. When they return they’re not really helpful because they’ve lost the touch of nature, they’re no longer in tune of what real life means.” So, in 2002, he helped start the Youth Leadership Programme — now the Youth Learning Centre — as an “incubator” to turn out future leaders who could return to and help develop their communities.

One of the YLC’s first graduates was Norbert Salty, who now teaches computing and information technology at the center after several years working in various roles, including as NRDDB vice-chairperson. He is keen to show his students the potential of technology for capturing and analyzing environmental data to improve communities’ sustainable management practices. One hindrance to Salty’s objective is the patchy internet access on site. Sending an email, responding to a WhatsApp message or doing online research generally involves waking up around 3 a.m.

The center faces other challenges, too, often related to sparse funding. Most of the batteries that service the two high-tech solar panels are dead or running at reduced capacity, leading to an overreliance on an expensive diesel-powered generator. The school bus sits still, awaiting a spare part. And the students’ carefully planted kitchen garden has been destroyed numerous times by invading iguanas, goats and sheep, all for want of a sturdy fence.

According to people who have visited the center over the years, change has been steady but slow — and prone to setbacks. Which is perhaps not surprising given the logistical difficulties the school faces. These include expensive and restricted transportation, limited access to resources, and the need to negotiate the budgetary oversight of the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples Affairs, which earmarks the bulk of the center’s income each year, about $238,000. Under the previous government things were even tighter, with the center reportedly receiving just under $2,400 per month. At one point in 2014, staff were sent home due to lack of funds. With a general election due in the next few months, the center’s income could be at risk once again.

Nevertheless, older staff members attested to the massive transformation that has taken place here. A passing cowboy, who it turned out manages the institute’s cattle herd, wistfully recalled days when students would ride around on horseback. Bina Hill’s administrator, Emily Allicock (a cousin of Minister Allicock), remembered cooking in the open air: “We didn’t have a stove and them things … we actually had a fireside, an outside kitchen.” Even current students spoke of, as recently as last year, having to collect water from the well, having no lights in the dorms, and food scarcities.

The center’s move toward modernity reflects a wider cultural shift away from traditional ways of life. It’s a generational gap that the center seeks to bridge, but sometimes struggles with itself.

“Long ago, Amerindian people never really did lumbering as a form of commercial gain, they were more in their traditional rotational farming,” said forest management tutor Frank Allicock (Minister Allicock’s nephew; having two members of a founder’s family on staff is not as nepotistic as it may sound given that Guyana’s entire population numbers less than 800,000 people). “Nowadays young people like us want lots of money and we know that if we go cut, we can maybe make this amount of commercial gain from this log.”

In his forestry class, students learn about guidelines set by the Guyana Forestry Commission, as well as local practices. Field trips are regular events: whether it’s visiting the mill site at Iwokrama’s center, roughly two hours north of Annai, or seeing a village elder demonstrate how to cut a tree with an ax. Some students also attend a 14-day course offered by the forestry commission that covers everything from tree identification to chainsaw maintenance.

Frank Allicock also teaches natural resource management, including the extractive industries in Guyana such as oil, aluminum, gold and diamonds. By learning about the impact of mining alongside classes in sustainable resource extraction and alternative livelihoods, YLC staff hope the students will be able to advise their own communities on how to mine in a more sustainable, less destructive way, or even avoid mining altogether.