Reconstructing Lokono Contributions to Science

Abstract

Abstract Since the first colonial encounter, Indigenous people have shared their unique systems of knowledge with colonial actors. Yet, their roles in colonial research and their contributions to Western science remain both obscured by the careers of their collaborators and segmented by the bounds of the disciplines they helped advance. This article is an attempt at reconstructing and recentering the life work of Johannes Karwafodi, a Lokono man from the early-twentieth-century colony of Suriname who worked with Surinamese, Dutch, and international scholars, most notably, the Penard brothers (anthropology, zoology), De Goeje (linguistics, anthropology), Stahel (ethnobotany), and Abbenhuis (anthropology). At the same time, this in memoriam is a contribution to the study of science making in the colony, its actors, formats, methods, and conditions, written with the view to contextualizing its outcomes more broadly and stimulating new research into the roles that Indigenous people played in creating them.