Ecological Stereotypes: Perceptions of Indigenous and Maroon Communities in Late Colonial Suriname

Abstract

The colonial historiography of Suriname has often portrayed the Indigenous and Maroon inhabitants of the Surinamese Amazon in stereotypical ways, according to which the former would be stewards of the rainforest whereas the latter would have a destructive relationship to nature. Such stereotypes have persisted in conservationist discourse and in the Surinamese nationalist literature of the first half of the twentieth century. As such, they were at the basis of the Surinamese national project prior to independence, and justified dispossessing Maroon populations of their ancestral lands. The alleged ecological differences between the two populations can, however, not be sustained within our current understanding of Amazonian history.

Keywords:

• Suriname
• Amazon
• Maroons
• Indigenous people
• stereotypes
• identities
• historiography
• ecology
• environmental history

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 This challenge also exists, albeit to a lesser extent as their languages are more widely known, for the Co-operative Republic of Guyana and for French Guiana.

2 All numbers have been calculated based upon Menke (2016).

3 All translations in this article are my own.

4 The event of these exploration flights was also incorporated into history-writing from the other perspective, as it inspired the Trió woman Kunawaruku to compose a song, now popular, about the “giant canoe” of the “white people who have come to eat you up” (published in Van Kempen 1995), showing how the attribution of supposed cannibalistic tendencies can work in both directions.

5 For Geijskes’s involvement in these expeditions, see the following two newspaper articles from 1950: “Poika moet concentreren”, Het Nieuws, 5 September; and “Naar Bigi Poika”, De West, 16 October.

6 “Goudplacer Brokopondo”, in De West, Nieuwsblad uit en voor Suriname, 31 July 1925.

7 For a more detailed account of the building of the Brokopondo Dam and its impacts on the Maroon population, please see Lobach (2023).

8 In his political career, he used his birth name Lou Lichtveld, while his pseudonym Albert Helman remained his main name as an author. I use both names accordingly in this paper.

9 “Stukken betreffende onderzoekingen naar de juridische, sociologische, ecologische en medische implicaties van het ontstaan van het Brokopondo-stuwmeer”, 1959–1960, and “Ingekomen rapport van de Stichting Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek in Suriname en de Nederlandse Antillen (WOSUNA) over een biologisch onderzoeksproject in Brokopondo”, 1965. Dutch National Archives, The Hague. Digitaal Duplicaat: Gouverneur van Suriname, Kabinet, number 2.10.26, folders 1365 and 1367.

10 As denounced by Dutch politician Johannes Reijers during the Senate debate of 27 February 1962. Dutch National Archives, The Hague, inventory number 296, Kabinet van de Vice-Minister-President en Kabinet voor Surinaamse en Nederlands-Antilliaanse Zaken, 1959–1975.

11 “Stukken betreffende de transmigratie van Bosnegers uit het gebied van het geplande Brokopondo stuwmeer en de opvang van deze transmigranten in het kamp Brownsweg”, 1964-1965. Dutch National Archives, The Hague. Digitaal Duplicaat: Gouverneur van Suriname, Kabinet, number 2.10.26, folder 2661, pp. 24–35.

12 Idem, pp. 37–38.

13 Nevertheless, this work was probably produced by a Dutch author using a supposedly “Indigenous” pseudonym (Van Kempen 2003).

14 English translation based upon the Dutch version contained in Szulc-Krzyzanowski and Van Kempen (1992).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Simon Lobach

Simon Lobach is a PhD candidate in the International History Department at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland. His research focuses on the traditional populations of the Guiana Shield in the context of resource exploitation and deforestation. Holding degrees in History, Latin American Studies, and International Affairs, Simon worked as a consultant in the UN system for several years before returning to academia in 2018.