Totomboti collective
2025
We are very happy to announce our new Thami Mnyele Foundation award winners, Totomboti collective! Their members, Alingo Doekoe and Paitoja Saakje, will stay in our residency during the months of June and July, with the support of members Vinije Haabo and Marjet Zwaans. During their time here, they will focus on their research, the development of their website and will participate in the Oerol festival from June 13 to 22.
Totomboti is a collective of artists, writers, and researchers working at the intersection of nature conservation and knowledge transfer. The collective originated in the 1980s as a club of rebellious young people who opposed the increasing dependence on the city. They advocated a closer relationship with nature and greater respect for forest spirits. Years later, they established the Totomboti Foundation with the goal of promoting greater awareness of Saramakan cultural heritage among young people through woodcarving and farming.
Meanwhile, the foundation has expanded its activities to include research on the spiritual forces and nature-related phenomena associated with conservation and the shared past of African and Dutch ancestors. Totomboti collective shows visual art installations, with wood, textiles, songs, drums, and audiovisual documentation. By combining these installations with gatherings and conversations, Totomboti creates a space for exchange, awareness, and joy.
In 2009, the Saamaka Museum was built to further promote the cultural heritage of the Saramakan people. This was followed two years later by a wood workshop to create both traditional Saramakan woodcarvings and contemporary massive wood sculptures.
Collective Totomboti (TTMBT) is a factor of significance in the international art world. Its members are no longer exclusively from Piki Seei, but live all over the world. Their nature-inspired artworks are displayed in art institutions in both Suriname and the Netherlands. In recent years, Collective TTMBT has had a number of collaborations and residencies in Suriname, the Netherlands, Switzerland and New York.
Totomboti's work is groundbreaking because it provides deeper insight into conservation, climate justice, oral and written sources and thus more complete picture of our shared (slavery/colonial) past. Never-before-seen elements and connections are exposed in the relationship between the present and the past, between man and nature (spirits) and the parallels between us and our common ancestors.
Totomboti works based on the Saramakan concept of pau a pau futu dendu (tree among roots, or unity in diversity and interdependence) and reciprocity. Within their projects, the goal is to achieve mutual benefits for our international partners and Piki Seei in special.
Ton yeke, Ton yelele - Buro Stedelijk
Basia Edje Doekoe – Assistant Village Chief, Artist, Founder of Totomboti
Basia Edje has been involved in the development of Pikin Slee from a young age. Both his father and grandmother were spiritual leaders whom he experienced up close. He belongs to the last generation that was trained without Western education and was officially initiated into the secrets of the forest, the village, and the divine realm. In the early 1980s, at a young age, he started a Rasta movement that opposed the village leadership, which was seen as too dependent on the city. The Rastamen of Pikin Slee preached a return to nature and to the rules of the ancestors and forest gods. They decided to live from then on following a salt- and meat-free diet— a rule that aligns more closely with the laws of Mavungu, one of the most important gods of the Saramaka people.
During the same period, he founded the art collective Totomboti to promote arts and crafts among Saramakan youth.
In 2009, Totomboti, led by Edje and Toya, built the Saamaka Museum, which they describe as the great school. Around that same time, Edje was officially appointed as basia, guardian of the Duku family. As a family guardian, he also serves as assistant to the village chief, making him one of the key figures in the governance of Pikin Slee and other communities along the Upper Suriname River.
Toya Saakie – Artist, Founder of Totomboti
Toya spent his youth in Paramaribo, where his father worked as a woodcarver and carpenter. As one of the few among his peers in Pikin Slee, Toya received formal education—something that would have a significant impact on his later life. In the late 1980s, he returned to Pikin Slee and joined the Rasta movement led by Edje. Due to his upbringing and education in the city, he brought a different dynamic to the group. The Rastas began to focus more on agriculture and actively sought new markets, including the National Army and the Jungle Commando, who were at war from 1986 to 1992.
In addition to selling vegetables and other crops, the Rastas also worked toward the reopening of the village school, which had been closed for more than ten years as a result of the war.
With the founding of Totomboti, they increasingly dedicated themselves to crafting solid wooden benches and sculptures inspired by the gods and the natural environment. Toya is a major artistic force and can be found daily in Totomboti’s tembe gangasa, working on traditional woodcarvings and contemporary solid wood sculptures.
Marjet Zwaans – Artist and Artistic Coordinator
Marjet is a Dutch artist with a strong affinity for artist collectives, valuing the unique benefits that come from collaborative forms of working. Correspondence and connectedness are central themes in her practice. As a visual artist, she organizes her work around the principles of Ecological Economics, which take shape through spatial installations, performances, and gatherings. She seeks ways for each contributor to participate from their own experience, without merging into a single identity—a practice of correspondence.
Marjet first came into contact with Totomboti during a trip to Suriname in 2018. On the recommendation of her mother, an ENT doctor working in Suriname, she visited the Saamaka Museum and Totomboti’s woodworking studio. Since then, she has regularly spent extended periods in Pikin Slee at Totomboti’s invitation, collaborating and deepening her understanding of the local culture. She now speaks Saramaccan fluently and has worked with Totomboti on multiple international and local projects.
Marjet studied Ecological Economics and Fine Arts at the University of Groningen, Minerva Art Academy in Groningen, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. In her collaboration with Totomboti, she builds a bridge between her Western upbringing, education, and training, and the Saramaccan oral traditions, which are closely connected to ancestral spirits, the spiritual realm, and the natural environment.
Vinije Haabo – Translator and Expert on Saramaccan Culture
Vinije was born and raised in Pikin Slee and belongs to the first generation to receive formal education after the village school was built in 1980. He witnessed firsthand how the village elders grappled with the arrival of the school and the emergence of the Rasta movement. After completing primary school, he moved to Paramaribo for further education, where he stayed at a boarding school run by Catholic priests and brothers. Despite living elsewhere, Vinije has always maintained strong ties with Pikin Slee.
He began collaborating with Totomboti after the Surinamese Interior War (1986–1992) to help renovate and reopen the village school. He actively recruited teachers to work at the school in Pikin Slee. Around the turn of the millennium, he moved to Leiden to study African linguistics with the aim of developing a writing system for the Saramaccan language. He later settled in Wageningen, where he studied Development Studies.
Vinije has deeply immersed himself in the Saramaccan language and culture. As a journalist and activist, he has served for decades as a bridge between the Saramaccan people and the outside world. He is an advisor and translator for Totomboti, the Saamaka Museum, and the Association of Saramaccan Communities (VSG).
Other members of the Totomboti collective:
Bensaawa Amiemba (Waawa) – Singer, Dancer, and Keeper of Saramaccan Secrets
Basia Waawa is not only a gifted dancer and singer but also a knowledgeable guardian of the apunku, apinti, and wenti spiritual secrets. Her talent for music and dance was discovered at a very young age. Her father was a respected expert in the Saramaccan oral tradition and was responsible for training new village captains. For the eager young Waawa, this presented a unique opportunity to acquire additional knowledge. As a result, she came into possession of sacred knowledge as a young woman—knowledge that most boys her age couldn’t even dream of accessing.
She has said that this knowledge has often gotten her into trouble, as she is frequently challenged or pressured to reveal secrets. So far, she has resisted such temptations, preserving both the integrity of her knowledge and her reputation as a skilled dancer and singer. As basia (guardian and assistant village chief within the Amimba family), Waawa is also part of the daily leadership of Pikin Slee.
Abete Boyo Doekoe – Spiritual Leader, Storyteller, and Expert in Apinti and Apunku Rituals
Abete is a respected authority on Saramaccan culture and history, a knowledge he inherited from both his mother’s and father’s families. His grandmother and father were both esteemed spiritual leaders. Abete and his family are guardians and stewards of vital spiritual knowledge related to obia and other natural forces. His brother is the current spiritual leader of Mavungu, the principal forest god of the Dombi family in Pikin Slee.
Abete’s role as a mentor, storyteller, and knowledge bearer is of great importance to the Kanda Hanka project (2023–24). His presence legitimizes and ensures respectful and appropriate engagement with centuries-old rituals and songs—some of which were presented outside their traditional context for the first time during Oerol 2024.
Lietje Pansa – Singer and Student
Lietje lives and studies in Paramaribo but grew up in Pikin Slee. From a young age, she showed a natural talent for the seketi dance. She attributes this to her mother, who made it a habit to sing beautiful seketi songs at home and on the family’s agricultural plots while raising her children.
Lietje’s father is a basia, and her grandfather was a gifted storyteller and expert in Saramaccan culture. Totomboti aims to encourage young people to learn about and share Saramaccan culture, and Lietje has proven to be an outstanding ambassador. She is approachable, eager to learn, and highly motivated.