"Secessionist Maroons who have asserted sovereignty": Accompong Maroons and the Jamaican State today.

In 2021, on the election of a new chief -- the youngest ever colonel at the age of 40--relations between the Accompong Maroons and the Jamaican Government soured. Under Chief Richard Currie, who describes himself as a government official and head of state, Accompong asserted sovereignty as the "Sovereign State of Accompong," with Accompong Town as the capital of the Cockpit Country. The Maroons of the State of Accompong identify themselves as "heirs to the 1738 Treaty and Maroon Identification", claiming descent from self-freed formerly enslaved West Africans and indigenous Amerindians. According to Chief Currie, "The earth is the lord and the fullness thereof. Our sovereignty is derived from the freedom of our lands, so whatever we do with our lands is of imperative value to our security as a people". This declaration of sovereignty has led the Jamaican Government to declare that they do not recognise any "state within a state". The Government, therefore, refuses to engage with or fund those communities that they have described as "Secessionist Maroons". This case study situates the contemporary Maroons in the history of Jamaica and their current relationship to the Jamaican state. It explores, in particular, the contending notions of sovereignty which may lay behind the con- flict between the "Sovereign State of Accompong" and the Jamaican State. Key to the conflict is the differences in meanings of the 1738 Treaty made by the "First Time Maroons," who fought the British to a stand-still in the 18th Century, forcing them to come to terms with them. For Maroons today, the Treaty is eternal, while the now-independent Jamaican state sees it as abrogated. Therefore, is a rapprochement possible? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]