Maroon Women in Suriname and French Guiana: Rice, Slavery, Memory

Given the few written documents left behind by those who escaped slavery, the analysis of African agency in the transfer of crops and knowledge in the successful establishment of Maroon communities benefits from other disciplines, such as oral history, ethnobotany and linguistics. In this article, we report the way stories of enslaved women, who escaped in the early periods of slave rebellion in Suriname, live on in the names of specific rice varieties. Such stories pay tribute to the crucial role women played in ensuring food security for their runaway communities. We combined information from ethnobotanical surveys, Maroon oral history, archival documents and published accounts to show how Maroon farmers today safeguard their agricultural diversity and cultural heritage by planting rice varieties that still carry the names of their female ancestors. We focus on a selected number of rice varieties named after the Saamaka ancestors Seei, Yaya and Paanza, Tjowa of the Matawai, Sapali, Ana and Baapa of the Ndyuka, and describe the stories attached to them.