A decade of art and research with Kuna children

A decade of art and research with Kuna children
by Katie Zien

While discussing his journey from researcher to arts education facilitator, festival organizer, and co-publisher of a bilingual coloring book for and about Kuna indigenous culture, biologist Jorge Ventocilla noted that many things in life did not progress in a linear fashion. To judge from the breadth and depth of work that has emerged from Ventocilla's years of collaboration with artists, scholars, and community members in and outside of the Kuna Yala Comarca, a lack of linearity may increase the potential for creative approaches to scholarly analysis and methodology.

Nevertheless, in the latest installment of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI)'s monthly presentation series, Ventocilla was able to trace a fairly coherent narrative about his work with the Kuna, one of the most populous of Panama's seven indigenous groups. Ventocilla's talk highlighted the practical and philosophical lessons that he and co-collaborators had gleaned from their participation in Kuna youth art activities, a relationship that began with research on Kuna hunting practices in 1989 and culminated in 1999 in a network of four youth art education workshops linked in annual festivals.

Introducing his presentation, Ventocilla joked that he was speaking as an excuse to bring together old friends whom he had not seen in awhile. Many of those present in the audience were in fact past participants in the workshops and other outreach activities, and many hailed from the Kuna community. The presentation covered diverse ground, tracing Ventocilla's intellectual journey from researching hunting practices among the Kuna to leading classes on art, traditional hunting, and animal classification --- culminating in a bilingual coloring book in Dulegaya and Spanish, which explored customary fauna in the Kuna's traditional habitats while allowing children to map their own landscapes.

Ventocilla stressed that knowledge is power, and researchers have a responsibility to deliver their results to the community in which they conducted their research rather than siphoning off the products of their research for more rarefied audiences, as is often the case. If scholarship is consistently extracted from one community for the benefit of another, the production of knowledge will reproduce oppressive social relations. To this end, Ventocilla expanded his study on hunting practices in Cangandi, a site in Kuna Yala, into an active role in Kuna classrooms, teaching children about the natural environment and learning about Kuna perspectives on the natural world. While many had initially reacted to Ventocilla's scrutiny of their hunting practices with bewilderment, community members warmed to Ventocilla as he began a more invested, long-term relationship with his research subjects. The workshops began with a drawing competition in Ailigandi and spread to Mandi Yala, Ukupseni, Akuanusadup (Corazon de Jesus) and Carti Sugdup, and the festivals featured arts including screen-printing, dance, painting, and mural paintings of important individuals in the past and present life of the Kuna. Importantly, art enabled both cultural specificity --- for example, the portrayal of a Kuna burial --- and unity across cultures, with depictions of games, like hide-and-seek, that would be readily accessible to children in many cultural contexts. Competitions also lent confidence to local artists, who then began to take leadership roles in instructing the workshops in their respective townships.

The knowledge that Ventocilla gained about how the Kuna view nature informed his desire to coauthor a bilingual Dulegaya-Spanish coloring book, titled Anma Napguana Mimmigana (Nosotros los hijos de la madre tierra --- We, Children of Mother Earth), which brims with insightful folklore and wisdom. An example: the Kuna classification of fauna categorizes iguanas along with monkeys, as animals that dwell in trees. Kuna children often have Guili (parakeets) as pets from an early age, a practice that instills in them an appreciation for animals. The book describes the animals that form the core of the Kuna's meat-based diet and teaches linguistics even while it enacts the preservation of Kuna cultural heritage and allows children to develop their aesthetic skills. The images in the coloring book were drawn by the Kuna artist Ologuagdi, but a couple pages were intentionally left blank so that children could draw their own designs.

Mentioning various participants and supporters from Panama and other locales, including Blas López, Rutilio Paredes, poet Héctor Collado, the Duiren Organization, and Laura Reinsborough --- the latter the creator of a documentary, Viva, that showed organizers and teaching artists discussing their work with the program --- Ventocilla paid homage to the many volunteers and organizations that had made the long-term involvement with Kuna youth possible. Ventocilla's chronicle of his arts education efforts in the Kuna Yala prompted many audience members to voice the hope that the programmings could be revived in the future. As tenuous as the renewal of funding for these programs seems to be, the issue of ongoing leadership by interested community members is not in question. As Ventocilla noted, underplaying his own role in the arts education networks, efforts to spur art and educational activities by committed individuals and groups within the Kuna Yala had begun before he arrived and would likely continue long after his retirement and consequent departure from the scene. In response to a question from an audience member about similar programs with coastal populations near Colon, Ventocilla observed, "There is always more to do."

lifestyle