page_title: Afro-Surinamese people
section_title: Maroons
hierarchical_section_title: Afro-Surinamese people / Maroons
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Foto. Groepsportret in Paramaribo waarschijnlijk etr gelegenheid van emancipatiedag og koninginnedag.. Portret van een groep Marrons op het Gouvernementsplein tijdens een feestelijke aangelegenheid
context_page_description: Afro-Surinamese people are the inhabitants of Suriname of Sub-Saharan African ancestry. They are descended from slaves brought to work on sugar plantations. Many of them escaped the plantations and formed independent settlements together, becoming known as Maroons. They maintained vestiges of African culture and language.
context_section_description: Escaped slaves in Suriname and French Guiana, known as Maroons or Bushinengues, fled to the interior and joined with indigenous peoples to create several independent tribes, among them the Saramaka, the Paramaka, the Ndyuka (Aukan), the Kwinti, the Aluku (Boni), the Matawai, and the Brooskampers. By 1740, the maroons had formed clans and felt strong enough to challenge the Dutch colonists, forcing them to sign peace treaties. Because of their long isolation in interior rainforests, they maintained more African culture than did ethnic Africans in the cities. From 1972 to 1978, two American professors, S. Allen Counter and David L. Evans, made seven voyages upriver into the maroon areas. Both African Americans, they wanted to contact these communities and learn about the peoples, to see what African cultures they followed.
  By the 1980s, the maroons in Suriname had begun to fight for their land rights to protect territory which they had long occupied. They won an important case in 2007 at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which ruled they had rights to their traditional lands.
caption: Maroon group in 1930
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D700", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "200", "Image YResolution": "200", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008:11:12 16:11:32", "Image ExifOffset": "216", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "850", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8190", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/100", "EXIF FNumber": "20", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:11:11 10:25:43", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:11:11 10:25:43", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "415241/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "540241/62500", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "17/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "60", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "16", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "16", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "700", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "491", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "60", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}