Support Caribbean Maroons visit to Jamaica!

**Please lodge your TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION to this cause at https://www.gofundme.com/f/4feqp9-5000**

The UNITED MAROON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES (UMIP) is a global social movement devoted to the sovereignty of Maroons of the Diaspora. Maroons descend from Indigenous Africans who were brought to the New World by force by the transatlantic slave trade. Our ancestors escaped enslavement and set up independent communities. Many of them (then) and us (now) are moving forward in allyship with First Nations peoples, whose struggles intertwine with ours and with whom many Maroons have historically had kinship. Around the globe, our lands, lives, and livelihoods are under threat, and our fight has been going on since settler colonialism and chattel slavery began.

From March 25 to April 3, Mr. José Francisco Calí Tzay, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Issues, will visit Maroon communities across Jamaica to hear stories and bear witness to the ways of life carried on for centuries in resistance to colonialism and enslavement. In a show of regional solidarity for Maroon and other Indigenous brothers and sisters, Maroon and other Indigenous elders and allies will also travel to Jamaica to be part of this historic visit.

Funds will be used to help offset flights, accommodation and ground transfers for delegates from Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, the USA, Barbados, Suriname, and Dominica. Funds will also go towards supporting Jamaica-based activists, a documentation team and creating a permanent digital archive of the journey of the United Maroon Indigenous Peoples. This is a continuation of a decade of advocacy, meetings and legal consultations in the service of self-determination for Maroon and other Indigenous communities in the Caribbean.

= Like the serendipity fruit (pictured below), we eat it after eating something sour (like a lime) and the taste in our mouth becomes something sweet = we turn sour into sweet =