Review by Choice Review
The story of Saramaka Maroons--horticulturalists and descendants of slaves who liberated themselves from their Dutch masters around the turn of the 18th century--provides a valuable set of lessons that anthropologist Price (College of William and Mary) is in an exceptional position to share. His detailed volume records the Saramaka struggle for self-determination, from their resistance to early colonial efforts to reincorporate them into the slave economy (culminating in a historic peace treaty in 1762) to contemporary legal efforts to achieve reparation for environmental and cultural damage suffered in late colonial and postcolonial development projects. Price frames this work as largely documentary in nature, providing an engaged anthropologist's record of Saramaka struggles through political and legal processes in Suriname and internationally that resulted in an important and largely favorable judgment from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2008. However, he also offers considerable insight into broader cultural processes and local and global practices of human rights in the complicated context of persistent and often homogenizing forces of nationalism. Tom Molloy's insider account of the Nisga'a comprehensive claims process in Canada, The World Is Our Witness (2000), would provide an interesting comparative counterpoint to Price's tale. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. C. J. MacKenzie University of Lethbridge
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review