18 Facts About Saramaka

In 2007, the Saramaka won a ruling by the Inter-American Court for Human Rights supporting their land rights in Suriname for lands they have historically occupied, over national government claims.

Since 1990 especially, some of the Saramaka have migrated to French Guiana due to extended civil war in Suriname.

Since their escape from slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Saramaka have lived chiefly along the upper Suriname River and its tributaries, the Gaanlio and the Pikilio.

Ancestors of the Saramaka were among those Africans sold as plantation slaves to Europeans in Suriname in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

The Saramaka have a keen interest in the history of their formative years; they preserve their very rich oral tradition.

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In 1883, the Governor of French Guiana and the Granman of the Saramaka, signed an official accord that Samarakas could stay in French Guiana under the legal authority of the Granman.

Traditional Saramaka houses are compact, wide enough to tie a hammock and not much longer from front to back; with walls of planks and woven palm fronds, and traditionally roofs of thatch or, increasingly, of corrugated metal.

Since the Suriname civil war, the Saramaka have built an increasing number of houses in coastal, Western style.

For subsistence, the Saramaka depend on shifting horticulture done mostly by women, with hunting and fishing done by men, supplemented by the women gathering wild forest products, such as palm nuts.

Until the late 20th century, the Saramaka produced most of their material culture, much of it embellished with decorative detail.

Saramaka society is firmly based on a matrilineal kinship system.

The Saramaka treat marriage as an ongoing courtship, with frequent exchanges of gifts such as men's woodcarving and women's decorative sewing.

Saramaka society is egalitarian, with kinship forming the backbone of social organization.

Since the 18th-century treaty, the Saramaka have had a government-approved paramount chief, as well as a series of headmen and assistant headmen .

Today about 25 per cent of Saramaka are nominal Christians – mainly Moravian, but others Roman Catholic.

Saramaka world is populated by a wide range of supernatural beings, from localized forest spirits and gods that reside in the bodies of snakes, vultures, jaguars, and other animals, to ancestors, river gods, and warrior spirits.

The Saramaka believe that all evil originates in human action; not only does each misfortune, illness, or death stem from a specific past misdeed, but every offense, whether against people or gods, has eventual consequences.

Ethnography among the Saramaka was first conducted by Americans Melville and Frances Herskovits .