Jonathan Tjien Fooh
2023

2023 marked the year to commemorate the abolition of Slavery in Suriname and the ABCSSS islands; on the 9th of August 2023 we commemorated 133 years of Javanese Emigration in Suriname, but this received far less attention. Furthermore, there has been increasing research on the lasting impacts of colonization and historical oppression, through the lens of ‘historical trauma’, with the focus on the holocaust and ongoing oppression Indigenous people still face in the present.

Some research efforts have concentrated on the intergenerational impact of slavery, resulting in theories like post-traumatic slave syndrome. Research on Indentured Labour, however, has been comparatively limited, and on Javanese-Surinamese people even more so. This research aims to uncover the impact of colonialism and historical trauma from the perspective of the Javanese community in Suriname and shed light on their process of healing, combining ethnography, imagination, archival research and storytelling. As artistic, cultural and spiritual practices gave Javanese people a sense of rootedness and resilience in the colonial era, I aim to explore how the Javanese-Surinamese community today applies these elements as a means of healing. This research also seeks to approach trauma and healing from a decolonial perspective, challenging dominant paradigms that split healing in the binaries of ‘western’ and ‘traditional’, often portraying ‘western’ medicine as superior.

Jonathan Tjien Fooh is a poet, writer, and researcher from Suriname, currently residing in the Netherlands. He studied Psychology (BSc.) at Anton de Kom University of Suriname and Cultural Anthropology (MSc.) at Utrecht University. All of his work is rooted in untangling systems of exclusion and oppression using an intersectional and decolonial lens; ultimately breathing life to untold and erased (hi)stories. His previous research explored themes related to the meaning of rukun and wellbeing in the lives of Javanese women in Suriname, arts-based research, queerness, identity, migration, and the politics of belonging. In 2015 he published the children’s book ‘De Magische Tuin van Mbah Semie’ (The Magical Garden of Grandma Semie), inspired by Javanese-Suriname culture and mythology. He also worked as a writer and translator on the oral history project ‘Geheugen van Noord Commewijne’ (Memory of Noord Commewijne). Currently he is a part of the research team of ‘Re/Presenting Europe: Healing the Afterlives of Colonialism’  and works as a coaching lecturer at Athena Institute (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam).