Kalalou: The Afro-Guianese Communities and Amazonian Biodiversity

PHOTOS BY KARL JOSEPH
TEXT BY MARC-ALEXANDRE TAREAU
TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY LÉOPOLD LAMBERT

In the context of this issue, we felt it was important to give special attention to the Businenge of Guyana and Suriname, where these Maroon communities have acquired Indigenous legal status. This project, by Martiniquean Creole anthropologist Marc-Alexandre Tareau and Guianese Creole photographer Karl Joseph, associates the Businenge relationship to Amazonian biodiversity with those of other communities of African descent in French Guiana (continental and archipelagic Caribbean Creoles). We present an excerpt of this project here.

With the Kalalou project, we decided to highlight the relationship of Afro-Guianese cultures to Amazonian biodiversity in an artistic and visual way. The Kalalou project focuses on the special relationship these populations have with the environment and how they make use of plant biodiversity through several focal points, including the gathering of medicinal plants (in urban and rural areas), cooking within these different communities, the liveliness of medical-magic rituals (Voodoo, Winti), and agriculture—both urban and rural. With this project we hope to emphasize the phenomena of cultural hybridization inherent in the intercultural context of Guianese society, the relationships between urban and rural—but also between wild and domestic. These phenomena highlight the dynamic characteristics of these practices and the close intertwining between these cultures, their territory, and the plant world.

Afro-Guianese are understood, in their broadest sense, to be the Businenge, Guianese Creole and Caribbean (Haitian, French Caribbean, and Saint Lucian) populations, which all form a significant part of the contemporary Guianese population. Since 2020, we have both been returning regularly to the sites of Marc-Alexandre’s thesis to reproduce the doctoral work in images.
Over time, relationships of trust built up between us, the researchers, and knowledge holders, helping to anchor the scientific community in the Guianese territories in a positive and lasting way. In each of our roles we travel through the same places, observe the same realities and transcribe them in the form of a continuous dialogue between texts and photographs.