First Time Saramaka

First-Time (fési-tén) is the Saramaka maroon concept for the founding period — the era of escape, battle, migration, and treaty negotiation that established the Saramaka as a free people in Suriname's interior. The concept names both a historical period and a living ideology: the insistence that these founding events must remain morally alive because forgetting them would weaken the community's capacity to resist renewed subjection. First-Time history is deliberately restricted knowledge, shared only with those judged ready to bear its responsibility.