MONIKONDEE RESEARCH

At the Vreedzaam Market in Paramaribo, Indigenous and Maroon vendors sell products from the forest. The market takes its name from Maroon politician Werner Vreedzaam, who opened it during Suriname’s Interior War (1986-1992). Fleeing the conflicts between the National Army and a Maroon guerrilla command, many Maroons and Indigenous people moved to the capital Paramaribo. The vendors talk about their wares and customers, and how they incorporate their cultural practices into the urban economy. The interviews took place shortly after the Covid pandemic, and were shot in the context of a workshop for aspiring filmmakers.

The interview was recorded during the 2022 flood, when rivers in the interior of Suriname burst their banks due to months of incessant rainfall. Two young women talk about the impact of this climate-related disaster on their food supply. They also address the altered relations between men and women, and their work as kwaka entrepreneurs in a society that increasingly revolves around money and gold.

Boatsman Marius Sekende, a Maroon freight driver from the Nduyka people, has travelled the Maroni River and its tributaries, the Lawa, Litani and Tapanahony since childhood. The area is the traditional habitat of Indigenous and Maroon peoples. Sekende knows the rivers’  labyrinth of rocks, rapids and islands like no other. In the interview, he speaks about the freighter’s trade and the post-colonial relationship between the inhabitants of the forested interior and urbanites in Suriname’s coastal plain.

The leaders of Maroon villages are called captains. They are assisted by basjas. The chief of the entire tribe is the gaanman. An important task of these authority figures is to mediate conflicts in the community by leading popular assemblies and ensuring consensus decisions. Captain Manga Aida outlines what the work of traditional leaders entails, and how it changed under the influence of gold mining. He also speaks about the Sweli and Agedeonsu spiritual forces, the history of these deities and what role they still have in the present.

The Maroons along the Tapanahony River call themselves both Ndyuka and Okanisi. The name Ndyuka derives from the bird’s cry that told the ancestors they had arrived at Ndyuka creek. Okanisi comes from Auka, the plantation where ancestors were enslaved before freeing themselves. Captain Baja Gazon addresses this history, and speaks about the Sweli and Agedeonsu spiritual powers, which helped the ancestors find their way in the forest after escaping slavery. He details the disruptive impact of gold mining on both the ecosystem and the community, and explains that the Ndyuka people’s penal system imposes fines that are actually a form of community service.

Galibi is home to the Kalina, an Indigenous people who still speak their own Kalina language. Hortence Kajouramari recites a story in this language of Kalina women who decided to abandon their idle husbands and sailed up the Amazon River.