There are roughly 16,000 Arawaks, (or Lokono), living today. The majority live in Guyana however there are also Arawaks in Suriname, French Guiana and Venezuela. Despite the large number of Arawak people, there are only about 2,450 speakers of Arawak. Many of these speakers are older adults and many children are not speaking the language. If this trend continues the Arawak language is in sure danger of disappearing. Arawak, of course, is an Arawak language.

Arawak people migrated from the northern coast of South American and populated the majority of the Caribbean in Pre-Columbian times. Their language gave rise to Taino, Karifuna and Garifuna.

SOME ARAWAK VERBS

TOP

LINKS

• Kayeno: This is the website of a Lokono organization in French Guiana. The text is in French, but has beautiful photos of Arawak traditional wear.


• Inheemsen: Contains tons of photos from the Lokono community in Suriname and the Netherlands. Lots of good pictures of the different kinds of Lokono traditional wear. It's in Dutch, so I don't know what it says but you can still click around.