Interview with Sirito-Yana Aloema, a member of OIS
“We need to take all of this work — what already has been done and lessons learned — and make it better.”
Sirito-Yana Aloema served as President of the Indigenous Organization of Suriname (OIS) from 2018 to 2022, continuing the legacy of the organization founded by his father, Nardo Aloema, a respected pioneer in the Indigenous rights movement in Suriname. Having grown up within the Indigenous movement, Sirito-Yana assumed leadership of OIS in 2018 and contributed to strengthening the organization’s advocacy for Indigenous rights, territorial protection, and community development. Since then, he has expanded his work internationally, collaborating with Indigenous organizations, governments, and civil society partners across the Amazon region.
Today, Sirito-Yana is a member of the Observatório dos Povos Indígenas Isolados (OPI) in Brazil, where he supports initiatives related to the protection of Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and Initial Contact (PIACI). He also serves as the focal point for the GTI-PIACI (International Working Group on Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and Initial Contact) in Suriname, facilitating dialogue, cooperation, and joint actions among Indigenous organizations, governments, and partners working to protect Indigenous peoples and their territories across borders.
Through his work, Sirito-Yana collaborates closely with Indigenous organizations throughout the Amazon Basin, particularly with the Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia Brasileira (COIAB), promoting regional cooperation, Indigenous leadership, territorial governance, and the defense of Indigenous rights. His efforts focus on strengthening Indigenous-led initiatives and fostering collaboration among Amazonian countries to address shared challenges related to territorial protection, environmental conservation, and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Sirito-Yana spoke with Rollo Romig about what Suriname's Indigenous movement can learn from its neighbors and the particular challenges of organizing without legal recognition.
Name:
Sirito-Yana Aloema
Organization:
OIS
Country:
Suriname
Interviewer:
Rollo Romig
Impact areas:
Barriers to Legal Recognition, Internal Fragmentation and Political Instrumentalization, Territorial Validation by Neighboring Communities, Effective Alliances, and Autonomous Exchange.
Download the full PDF interview.
On barriers
The absence of legal recognition leaves Indigenous communities without the foundation for any other protection measure.
Suriname is the only country in South America that does not legally recognize Indigenous peoples, a distinction that shapes everything about how advocacy is possible there. Without collective rights or written legal frameworks, communities cannot defend their cultural practices, their land, or their territories from encroachment. Sirito-Yana describes the consequences as cascading: language is being lost, cultural objects are being commodified, and communities have been conditioned by successive governments to wait for rights that never arrive rather than organize to demand them. More than 50 years of advocacy has produced no formal recognition, which he suggests should make Suriname of particular interest for funders and donors to support their work.
Internal fragmentation, exploited by political actors, is as damaging as external threats.
Sirito-Yana is candid that one of the most serious obstacles facing Suriname's Indigenous movement is the dynamics of the movement itself. Organizations can be unwilling to collaborate. Leaders are often divided along political and family lines. He traces these dynamics directly to political manipulation: governments have deliberately exploited divisions to prevent the kind of unified organizing that would be needed to press for rights. The result is a movement that is, in his view, behind what its diversity and capacity would otherwise make possible.
On consolidating PIACI as a global category
Uncontacted peoples exist in Suriname, but proof depends entirely on who is recognized as having the authority to say so.
Sirito-Yana describes communities in the south of Suriname who have lived alongside PIACI communities for generations and who have always respected their choice to remain apart. No formal research has been conducted. No state institution has confirmed their existence. But for Sirito-Yana, the testimony of neighboring Indigenous communities who know their territory is proof enough: "If we as indigenous people say that they exist, then you have to respect that and believe that." He sees the lack of state confirmation as a reflection of Suriname's broader failure to recognize Indigenous peoples at all, and he believes that with the right safeguards in place, drawn from lessons already learned in Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia, the groundwork for formal documentation could be built.
On building effective alliances
Exchange works, but it has to be Indigenous-to-Indigenous, not mediated by outside organizations.
Sirito-Yana's clearest recommendation for strengthening Suriname's movement is direct exchange between Indigenous peoples — not facilitated programs where NGOs set the agenda, but spaces where Indigenous leaders from different countries can work alongside each other, witness each other's struggles, and transfer what they know.
