The War is Not Yet Over: Runaways, Refugees, and Slavery Temporalities

Lecture by Olívia Maria Gomes da Cunha.

As many Cottica Ndyuka recognize, the events and the memory of the war provoked critical political changes in the Cottica area of Eastern Suriname. The lecture explores how the memory of the violence and persecution of the war and the recollection of life in the refugee camps created a dialogue between the slavery era and the modern period of extractivist capitalism. The landscape of mourning and fear, the ‘time of slavery,’ the Maroon struggles against the bakaa world (non-Maroon world), and the Civil War violence all overlap; they are part of the same history.

The afternoon will conclude with a roundtable discussion with Olívia Maria Gomes da Cunha, theater-maker and dancer José Tojo, and cultural anthropologist Thomas Polimé about working with Maroon heritages in past and present.

Olívia Maria Gomes da Cunha is Professor of Anthropology at the National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. This semester, she is a Fellow at NIAS, where she is working on a project entitled “On the impossibility of forgetting: runaways and refugees in the sentient maroon landscapes”, which explores how the Cottica Ndyuka, who moved to Moengo, Suriname, from refugee camps, reshaped the places they and their ancestors created.

José Tojo is a performer and Surinamese Maroon. He leads the Stichting Kula Skoro, which aims to create activities to promote the transmission of Maroon performance arts and culture in the Netherlands.

Thomas Polimé is a cultural anthropologist. As a guest curator he has provided his services to international institutions such as the Musée des cultures Guyanaises in Cayenne, French-Guiana and the Smithsonian. In the Netherlands, he has been involved in the realization of several large Maroon exhibitions in the Rotterdam World museum and the Amsterdam Tropenmuseum. He has also worked as a curator in Cayenne and St Laurent, where is preparing for an exhibition on refugees.