Saramaka

The Saramaka are a maroon people of central Suriname, descended from Africans who escaped from plantations in the late 17th and 18th centuries and settled along the upper Suriname River. After decades of war they won a peace treaty with the Dutch colony in 1762. They keep their own political institutions and language, Saramaccan, and won a landmark land-rights ruling at the Inter-American Court in 2007.