The Fifteenth Annual International Charles Town Maroon Conference, June 21-25, 2023  

“Reconciliation: Justice, Healing, Unity”

Under the theme “Reconciliation: Justice, Healing, Unity,”  The Fifteenth Annual International Charles Town Maroon Conference & Festival invites papers and performances from scholars, artists, and activists interested in exploring "Reconciliation" in broad theoretical and cultural terms, considering its predicaments, its paradoxes, and its possibilities in the context of indigenous histories and cultures. The complex history of the relationship of Jamaica’s Maroons to the state and people of Jamaica provides a compelling backdrop to such inquiry, and we solicit work that addresses the prospects and challenges of achieving peace for indigenous communities around the globe.  Presentations from all fields and genres are welcome, including history, geography, political science, anthropology, ethnomusicology, education, literature, film, the arts, sustainability studies, indigenous studies, economics, and ecocriticism. Participants will work closely with each other and the Maroons of Charles Town to explore the relevance of indigenous knowledge to contemporary life and the future of our worlds. 

The conference sub-themes include but are not limited to: 

• Maroons, Indigenous Peoples, and the State (self-determination, sovereignty) 
• Maroon Treaties (independence, national identity, "state within a state" status) 
• Reconciliation and the Environment (natural resources, mining, environmental justice, ecological issues) 
• Strategies of reconciliation (implementations, challenges, complexities) 
• Reconciliation and identity (creative, intellectual, philosophical, spiritual) 
• Limits of reconciliation and (imperialism, colonialism, indigenous resistance) 
• Histories of reconciliation (stories of disunion and uniting) 
• Literatures of reconciliation  
• Reconciliation and Healing  

The International Charles Town Maroon Conference & Festival takes place in the town’s Asafu Yard, sacred space of Maroon dancing and drumming, surrounded by Jamaica’s beautiful Blue and John Crow Mountains. Offering a unique combination of scholarly panels, Taíno Ceremony, African Ancestral Veneration and variedcultural events, the conference brings Maroons and Indigenous Peoples together with scholars and locals to examine the ways their legacies have endured, creolized, and resonated in the Caribbean, Africa, Canada, Australia, South America, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Please send abstracts of 250-300 words or inquiries to fbotkin@towson.edu by April 15.