The humble ethnographer : : Lodewijk Schmidt's accounts from Three voyages in Amazonian Guiana / / translated, annotated and introduced by Renzo Duin.

• Author: Brill Academic Publishers.
• TeilnehmendeR: Duin, Renzo,; Brill Academic Publishers.
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : BRILL,, [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Caribbean Series ; 38.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource.

Thanks to Renzo Duin’s annotated translation, the voice of Lodewijk Schmidt—an Afrodiasporic Saramakka Maroon from Surinam—is finally available for Anglophone audiences worldwide. More than anything else, Schmidt’s three mid-twentieth-century ethnographic accounts tell the tragic story of Indigenous Peoples of the Eastern Guiana Highlands (northern Brazil, and southern Suriname and French Guiana). Schmidt’s is a story that takes account of the pathological mechanisms of colonialism, in which Indigenous Peoples and African Diaspora communities, both victims of colonialism, vilify each other falling privy to the divide-and-conquer mentality mechanisms of colonialism. Accounts like that of the death and mourning of a magnificent Indigenous leader, Alapité, on 13-14 August 1941, suggest a deep respect on the part of the Maroon author, while his accounts also show his awareness of how the Indigenous Peoples vilified the Maroons. Beyond the ethnographic element, Duin argues that Schmidt was sent on a covert mission to determine whether or not the Nazis had engaged in covert missions and if they had established bases and airfields in the region. As current ecological disasters, incurred by neocolonial, neoliberal and geopolitical practices, threaten to completely destroy the Amazonian forests that Schmidt describes, his meticulous accounts underscore the predetermined tragedy that is the result of the European and later North-American presence in present-day Suriname, French Guiana and Brazil. Duin’s profound knowledge of the history, topography, and fauna of the region contextualizes Schmidt’s ethnographic accounts and forces us to take account of the catastrophe that is deforestation and ethnocide of the Indigenous Peoples of the Eastern Guiana Highlands.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables -- About the Translator and Editor of the Present Volume -- Book Summary -- Part 1: Introduction and Context -- 1 Definitions and Aspirations -- 2 The Significance of Lodewijk Schmidt’s Accounts to Anthropology Today -- 3 The Politics of Authorship and Circumstances of First Publication -- 4 Mapping the Unknown (or: An Audacious Colonial Endeavor) -- 5 Notes on the Translation -- 1 A Short Note on Indigenous Peoples and African Diaspora Communities -- 2 Some Surinamese Socio-political Concepts -- 3 Some Typical Surinamese Terms -- 4 A Short Note on Geographic Names -- Part 2: Ethnographic Accounts from Three Voyages in Amazonian Guiana -- 6 Introduction to the Original Publication -- 7 Notes on Wayana and Trio Demographics and Settlement Names -- 8 Account of the First Expedition -- 9 Account of the Second Expedition -- 10 Account of the Third Expedition -- Part 3: The People, and other Important Things -- 11 General Comments -- 12 Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of the List of Names of Inhabitants -- 13 The Inhabitants of the Wayana Villages on the Litani and Mapahoni Recorded by Lodewijk Schmidt between November 1940 and January 1941 -- 14 The Inhabitants of the Trio and Wayana Villages in South Suriname and in North Brazil Recorded Between November 1940 and March 1942 -- 15 The Inhabitants of the Wayana Villages on the Jari and Paru de l’Este Recorded Between November 1940 and January 1941 -- 16 Afterthought -- Bibliography -- Index.