Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, and Identity: Suriname and Guyane

Chapter 6 Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, and Identity: Suriname and Guyane

Richard Price and Sally Price

This essay focuses on languages and ethnic identities in two neighboring territories on the northeastern shoulder of South America – the Republic of Suriname and the French overseas département of Guyane. Both are multilin- gual, multiethnic spaces. And the people whom we have studied for more than fifty years, the Saamaka Maroons (some 90,000 people), now live in both, inter- acting more and more with other ethnic groups as they move with increasing frequency beyond their traditional home territory in the interior of Suriname. First, some general background. Suriname, which was a Dutch colony until it gained independence in 1975, often boasts of being the most multiethnic country in South America. The 2012 census reported a total population of 542,000 composed of 27 percent Hindustanis (descendants of indentured laborers brought in from India during the second half of the nineteenth century, after slavery ended), 23 percent Maroons (six different peoples whose ances- tors escaped slavery in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to form semi-independent societies in the forested interior), 16 percent Creoles (non-Maroon, largely urban Afro-Surinamers), and 14 percent Javanese (descendants of indentured laborers brought from Indonesia in the early twenti- eth century), with the remaining 20 percent divided among Brazilians (recent immigrants lured by the ongoing gold rush in the interior), Chinese (part of a continuing immigration), Amerindians (the original inhabitants of the country), and miscellaneous others (including Dutch). In addition, there are something like 400,000 people of Surinamese descent living abroad, mostly in the Netherlands. The national language is Dutch, which is used in schools, by the government, and on TV and radio. But the first language of most Creoles and the language used by everyone for communication across ethnic lines is an English-based creole called Sranantongo (‘Suriname language’). In terms of the first language of other groups, most Hindustanis speak Sarnami, a Suriname version of Hindi, and Javanese speak a Suriname version of Javanese. Two of the six Maroon peoples (the Saamaka and Matawai, who live in the central part of the interior) speak a variant of Saamakatongo (a Portuguese-, English- and African based creole) while the other four (the

Ndyuka, Pamaka, and Aluku, who live in the eastern part of the country and over the border in French Guiana, and the Kwinti, who live to the west of the Matawai) speak varieties of Ndyuka (an English-based creole related to Sranantongo). Chinese, Brazilians, and Amerindians speak their own languages as a first language. Altogether, there are more than twenty languages spoken today in Suriname, with more people speaking Dutch (with greater or lesser competence) than any other. For further information on the complex linguistic situation in Suriname, see Carlin and Arends (1992) and Carlin, Léglise et al. (2014). In neighboring Guyane (French Guiana), which is politically a distant out- post of Europe, the ethnic mix is equally diverse. Although French law does not permit ethnic enumeration in the census, estimates concur that the population of about 250,000 people includes 37 percent Creoles (non-Maroon Afro- Guyanais), 26 percent Maroons, 21 percent Brazilians (recent immigrants), and 19 percent Haitians (who also immigrated recently), plus smaller numbers of Chinese, Hmong, and diverse others. The official language is of course French, with a French-based creole as the lingua franca. For further information on the linguistic situation in French Guiana, see Renault-Lescure and Goury (2011) and Migge and Léglise (2013). Let’s turn now to Saamaka Maroons and their language, Saamakatongo, beginning with some historical background.1 In the middle of the seventeenth century, Suriname formed part of a vast forested area that stretched from the Atlantic to the Andes, the home of countless indigenous peoples who lived by hunting, fishing, and gardening. The first European colonists in Suriname, Englishmen from Barbados who arrived with their African slaves in 1651, ceded the area to the Dutch (in the famous 1667 swap in which the Dutch traded Manhattan to the English in return for Suriname) and the colony became one of the most profitable slave plantation societies in the Americas. By the end of the century, some 8000 African slaves were laboring for 800 Europeans – most of the indigenous population had simply retreated into the hinterlands. Before the end of the seventeenth century, as more and more enslaved Africans were landed in the colony, significant numbers began to escape into the surrounding rainforest. The colonists fought back, sending countless militias in pursuit of the runaways and handing out gruesome punishments for recaptured slaves – hamstringing, amputation of limbs, and a variety of deaths by torture. But the planters’ expeditions rarely met with success be- cause the Saamakas had established and protected their settlements with

1 In what follows, we draw upon various of our previous publications; see www.richandsally .net.