Visual Artifacts and Ontological Transformation among Cottica Ndyuka in Suriname

Families and young adults living in the bauxite town of Moengo (Suriname) use cameras and cell phones as 'devices' to record and learn about their 'koni' (traditional knowledge) and 'kulturo' (culture).  This paper explores the role of images of maroon men, women, as well as their villages, produced by anthropologists and other travelers in expeditions in Suriname’s interior during the early 20th century, especially among Cottica Ndyuka maroons living in  Moengo. The presentation will use as it’s starting point Pierre Verger photographic collections, exhibited in Cayenne in 2009 among maroons whose families have escaped from Civil War in Suriname (1986-1992) and were living in refugees camps in French Guiana near by the border. For some of them, the ‘old photos’ represented their first contact with visual depictions of village life in fesi fesi (old times). Images of fesi fesi and fesi ten (‘how things were before, in the ancestors’ time’), as well as details about the way people dressed and used artifacts that no longer exist, produced an interesting effect on the Cottica Ndyuka conceptions of creation, knowledge, and learning.  By examining the impact of Verger’s work after the Civil War among some people in Moengo, the presentation suggests how his standing as a white, foreign ethnographer and his anthropological gaze on maroon experiences became wrapped into long-term conversations about ‘how things were in the past’ and in the ‘slavery times’.