User:Lorelei/Desrey Fox

Desrey Fox (née Caesar) (2 January 1955 - 11 December 2009) was an Akawaio-Guyanese academic and politician.

Early years
Desrey Clementine Caesar was born to Gibson and Anita Caesar on 2 January 1955 in Waramadong, on the Karanang River in the Cuyuni-Mazaruni region of what was then British Guiana, now Guyana. She was the eldest of seven children. Her father was a Venezuelan migrant who trained to be a teacher at the Adventist College in Trinidad. Her mother came from Kako Village on the Mazaruni River. Both of her parents were among the earliest schoolteachers in Waramadong. She was brought up speaking English, but learnt Akawaio from her grandmother.

Education and academic work
Fox attended Waramadong Primary School, before moving to Georgetown where she studied first at Campbellville Secondary School and then at the Seventh-Day Adventist Academy. Due to insufficient financial resources she returned to Waramadong to prepare for her GCEs.

In 1973, Fox enrolled on a two year rural midwifery training course at Georgetown School of Nursing. She subsequently worked as a nurse at Georgetown Public Hospital for over three years.

In March 1977, she was recruited by Dr. Walter Edwards at the University of Guyana as a junior researcher on the Amerindian Languages Project. Shortly after taking up the position, she was made the lead research assistant on the project. Fox continued working on the Amerindian Languages Project for many years, and the project eventually became the Amerindian Research Unit (ARU). She was the head of the ARU for a time.

In 1984 she enrolled in the Faculty of Social sciences at the University of Guyana to study for a BSc in Sociology. In 1996, she won a European Union Scholarship to read for an MA in Environmental Anthropology at the University of Kent in Canterbury in 1996. She subsequently returned to her job at the University of Guyana. Later, she won a presidential scholarship to study at Rice University in Texas for a doctorate in Linguistics. Her dissertation was entitled Zauro’nodok Agawayo Yau: Variants of Akawaio Spoken at Waramadong, and she was awarded her PhD in 2003.

Politics
In 2006, Fox was sworn in as the Minister of the Ministry of Education. She was one of the countries first female indigenous ministers.

Awards
She was posthumously awarded The Cacique's Crown of Honour in 2011.

Selected Publications
The Indigenous Condition in Guyana: A Situational Analysis of the Mabura Great Falls Community

Continuity and Change among the Amerindians in Guyana

Five Hundred Years After: Indigenous Women in the Caribbean Revisited

Caught within the Cracks: the Case of the Amerindian Women of Guyana

Zauro’no dok Akawaio Yau: Variants of Akawaio Spoken in the Village of Warmadong

Body Metaphors in Akawaio House Construction

She won numerous prizes for her work, including: the Robert Lowery Pattern Prize from Rice University, the Dennis Irving Prize from the University of Guyana, and the post-doctoral National Science Foundation Grant from Rice University.