The Maroon People

The Maroon People of South America are the descendants of freed and runaway slaves from the 18th and 19th centuries. The Definition of the word maroon, which their name is derived, is "Leave (someone) in a trapped and inaccessible place."

When these slaves escaped or were freed they did not desire to mesh with those societies that enslaved them. they lived in the jungles, creating almost a new type of Indigenous group. Since slavery was abolished these Maroon societies have flourished, creating their own culture, language, and tradition.
Although the Maroons live within the vicinity of many native tribes, they rarely intermix in sexual relations or cultural customs. Although this independence from the natives exists their cultures have, to an extant, been shared in the long haul. The Maroon and indigenous cultures retain completely separate traditions and lifestyles resulting in a duality of some of the most interesting anthropological data in the world.

In French Guiana some members of the Maroon societies work for wages mostly as builders and fishermen. This introduction back into the western world is also allowing for a call to their civil rights and their territorial rights. Both the Maroon and indigenous peoples have begun to band together and organize themselves within the past few decades, and a call to their civil rights has been acknowledged.

The French Government for whatever reason have refused to take a consensus of neither the Maroon societies of the indigenous tribes, but it is believed that they could make up between 10 and 20% of the total population of French Guiana