Aukaners The Aukan tribe is the largest tribe living in the rainforest of Suriname. This group of people live along the Marowijn, Tapanahoni, and Cottica Rivers in Suriname. Aukaners are the descendants of runaway slaves or maroons who fled into the rainforest of Suriname. There they found help from the Amerindians, who also viewed the Dutch as potential enemies. Suriname was established in the late 1600s as a slave colony. In 1706 there were 10,735 people in Suriname (not counting the Amer-Indians), 9988 African slaves and 747 whites. Some slaves escaped. In 1712 tax-collectors arrived from Europe and the slave owners sent their slaves into the jungle to hide them. Almost 700 of these slaves never returned. As more and more slaves escaped, they began to organize themselves into six different tribes: the Ndyuka, the Saramaka, the Matawai, the Paramaka, the Kwinti, and the Aluku. The Aukan nation comes from the Ndyuka group of escaped slaves.

The culture is very different in the rainforest. Visiting an Aukan village is like stepping back in time, into West Africa two or three hundred years ago. Houses and boats are built in an African way. The Aukaners' religious practices center around the river gods and ancestors that they worship. And the people live a modified hunter-gatherer lifestyle (augmented with timber harvesting and gold mining). Life in an Aukan village is very different from life in the capital city of Paramaribo. In town the manners, morals, and behaviors are culturally closer to those found in America. But when you visit a village in the interior you are stepping into an African culture brought to South America. Thanks also to our friend Jim Park for this information: Aukaners are also called Ndyukas. The term Aukan according to Louis Shanks, "is derived from the name of the Auka plantation on the Suriname River where a peace treaty was signed in 1760 between the Maroons of eastern Suriname and the Dutch colonial government." The term "Ndyuka" according Aukan tradition came into being when a group of "Okanisi Sama" first entered the mouth of the Tapanahoni River. They heard a bird singing something like "Ndyuka". They took this as a name for themselves.