The third lecture in the Submerged Heritage series will be given by Ine Apapoe, head of the Public Administration Department at the Anton de Kom University of Suriname. In her talk, Apapoe will shed light on the political administrative decisions that led to the building of the Afobakka dam in Suriname, and its continued impact.

Apapoe will address the impact then and now on the Saamakan or Saramaccan community, on whose lands the dam was built, and on the environment. Zooming in on agriculture, gold mining and logging practices, she shows the complexity of issues that the dam brought about and that make a straightforward ‘solution’ such a challenge.

Submerged Heritage

Submerged Heritage is a research project by Daphne Bakker, Miguel Peres dos Santos and Vincent van Velsen. The research aims to critically investigate, through a focus on the Afobaka dam, how Dutch colonialism is intertwined with global capitalism. By highlighting aspects such as environmental destruction, extraction of resources, displacement, socio-political and cultural annihilation, the aim is to ignite a deeper dialogue about the impact of this colonial project.

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