African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
189 p., Traces the shape of historical thought among peoples who had previously been denied any history at all. The top half of each page presents a direct transcript of oral histories told by living Saramakas about their eighteenth-century ancestors, "Maroons" who had escaped slavery and settled in the rain forests of Suriname. Below these transcripts, Richard Price provides commentaries placing the Saramaka accounts into broader social, intellectual, and historical contexts.
East Lansing, MI: Women and International Development Programme, Michigan State University Women and International Development Programme, Michigan State University
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
48 p, Analyzes the relations between gender and gold mining among the Ndjuka Maroons, forest people of Suriname, South America. This is discussed within the context of women comprising a substantial percentage of the World's poor, for whom small-scale gold mining can be attractive.
Examines how marginalized Maroon youth in Paramaribo, the capital of the Caribbean nation of Suriname, employ musical strategies in combating ethno-racial stigmatization and improving their socio-economic position. Traditionally, Maroons, after escaping the plantations during slavery, have lived in semi-isolation in Suriname's dense rainforest. In recent decades, they have become increasingly urbanized, to the discontent of many in Paramaribo, who view Maroons as backward, violent criminals. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and popular culture analysis, the article discusses how young Maroons use reggae and dancehall to create and recreate physical and social spaces of their own within the city and outside the forest. They protest local conditions and inequity by drawing on regional images of marginality that have been shaped by Rastafari musicians in Jamaica.
