Names and peoples

The names given to people and places  in Suriname during the time of colonial domination have lasted longer than the colonizers. It is interesting to notice how easily the occupied territory of the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas and the Caribbean received European names which are still taught to our young students in school today.

The names of Taino and Kalinya who inhabited the Caribbean region as well as those of the many peoples in North, Central and South America were replaced by European inventions suited to European dreams and tastes.

It is well known that the Americas  were named after  the Portuguese pirate Amerigo Vespucci who sailed the Caribbean seas in search of treasures to fill the royal coffers of his European masters who financed his journey. His colleague and rival Columbus was looking for a new route towards India where the spices, precious stones, indigo and treasured silks were coveted by the Spanish royal court.
Today the world is confronted with many statues and tributes to honor Columbus, the man who could be held responsible for the renaming of indigenous  peoples of the Caribbean territory.

Columbus saw Taino on the Caribbean Islands and thought he had arrived in India calling the inhabitants Indians. Since the local population fiercely resisted the rude European intruders and ate them after killing them they were called Cannibals by the Europeans,which resulted in the name given to our region as the Caribbean.
Today many Surinamese inhabitants call themselves Indians rather than Kalinya , Taino , Arawac , Trio or Wayana. In fact many young Surinamese do not know who the original inhabitants of Suriname are  and how their origins relate to modern day Surinamese history.

In the same way Suriname's natural environment was renamed. A good example is the Tumuchumac mountain range which extends from Brazil to the Surinamese and French Guyanese territories.
The river which was called Shuruma by the Arawac original inhabitants became the Saramacca river after European colonizers sailed it and settled along its banks. According to modern schoolbooks the Saramacca river has its source in the Emma mountain chain in the Wilhelmina Mountain range which in fact is part of the Tumuchumac mountain range.  Dutch colonizers honored their Dutch queens Emma and Wilhelmina by giving their names to local Surinamese mountains covered by pristine rainforest.
There are many more examples of the way colonization robbed us of our own names and renamed places and people which originated in our region and who still are here today.
Even today the tradition of renaming inhabitants from the regions where the european colonial exploitation took place continues in Europe where "foreigners" receive all kinds of names to indicate they are not accepted as fully equal  to their white European fellow citizen.
Decolonization of the mind and hearts of young and old in Suriname begins with reclaiming our own names and rewriting our own history to suit our own memory of ourselves as peoples who were free and never gave up fighting for freedom.