SAWA: Wayana and Apalaï indigenous knowledge

The SAWA project aims to provide access and value, with the Wayana and Apalaï, Amerindian populations of French Guiana, a group of audiovisual resources (sound recordings, films) and photographic, as well as collections of objects, representative of their culture.

This long-term program was prefigured in 2014 and developed from 2015 by the Laboratory of Ethnology and Comparative Sociology LESC and the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac as part of the labex The past in the present. Its specificity is to be designed and realized in active collaboration with wayana and apalaï experts, in a logic of co-construction at all stages, with a view to appropriation by the groups concerned.

A digital portal, entitled WATAU, is the main retrieval tool. The Wayana and Apalaï participate in its conception, in the definition of the forms and conditions of access to the selected resources as well as in the study and enrichment of these resources related, in particular, to one of their major collective rituals, the marake/eputop.

The main collections processed are kept at the LESC (CNRS/Université Paris Nanterre) for audiovisual, at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, in Paris, and at the Museum of Guyanese Cultures, in Cayenne, for objects and photos.

Les language issues are present in the work of transcription of wayana and apalaï sound recordings and in the work of their translation into French and Portuguese, as well as in the study of museum artefacts and in the creation of a participatory digital system in wayana and apalaï. This means forging new words and enriching linguistic practice.

Finally, SAWA includes a reflexive and epistemological on the experience of indigenous peoples taking control of their own funds, on collaborative restitution practices and their impact on the transmission knowledge and know-how.

Carrying out an international mapping of funds and collections relating to these populations, the project is part of a partnership with Guyanese and international institutions (Brazil, Europe).

Consult the presentation of the project on the LABEX website - past in the present

Video presentation of the project SAWA wayana and apalaï indigenous knowledge

With the support of the Ministry of Culture (DAC Guyana), the General Delegation for the French Language and Languages of France (DGLFLF), the Ministry of the Overseas Territories (MOM), the Territorial Authority of Guyana (CTG).
And the contribution of the CORLI Consortium «CORpus, Langues, Interactions» (CNRS, Huma-Num, Institut de Linguistique Française) and the IPË association.