Keti Koti: Community, Celebration, and Remembrance

As I learned on July 1st, Keti Koti serves as both a day of remembrance and a celebration of freedom. It honors the resilience of those who endured slavery while celebrating the cultures, traditions, and communities that continue to flourish because of that resilience. “Keti Koti” or “Broken Chains” in Sranan Tongo, takes place on July 1st to commemorate the moment where slavery was abolished in Suriname and the former Netherlands Antilles on July 1st, 1863. 

In recent years, Keti Koti has also become an increasingly important moment for national reflection in the Netherlands.

As awareness grows, the day continues to gain recognition through commemorations, community initiatives, and local government participation across the country.

Keti Koti in Nieuw-West

This year's Keti Koti celebration held in the back garden of Street Art Museum Amsterdam (SAMA) was especially meaningful. It was the first celebration of its kind in this part of Nieuw-West and represented years of community organizing. Initiated by artist and community organizer Okundaye Odahiagbon (Okuns), the gathering was the result of three years of conversations, planning, and collaboration with local residents and partners.

As an intern at SAMA, participating in the organization of this event offered valuable insight into how community programming takes shape. It answered a question I had often wondered during my internship: How do events like this begin? The answer became clear: it starts with listening to and building relationships within the local community. 

The afternoon brought neighbors together over food, conversation, poetry, and music. Marcel prepared Surinamese chicken on the grill while guests gathered to celebrate Keti Koti in our garden with drinks and music. Being able to help host the event and represent SAMA on such an important day was both rewarding and memorable.

Later in the afternoon, Okuns spoke about the history of Keti Koti and its continued importance within Black communities in the Netherlands today. As a Black American with Afro-European heritage, I found myself reflecting on the different ways colonialism has shaped societies across the world. These histories are distinct and cannot be equated, but opportunities like this allow us to learn from one another and better understand the ways our histories intersect.

One idea from Okuns' poem, "BLACK JOY," stayed with me throughout the day:

the importance of understanding where we come from in order to understand the power of who we are. Identity is often shaped by both race and nationality, and taking the time to understand the histories that led us here can strengthen our sense of self and our connection to others.

There was a specific conversation during the celebration that particularly stayed with me. An attendee asked, "Why are we celebrating if forms of slavery still exist in different parts of the world?" It is an important question, and perhaps Keti Koti itself offers part of the answer.

Although the day is filled with music, food, and celebration, it is fundamentally rooted in remembrance. Traditional clothing, storytelling, and shared history remind us that resilience is something worth honoring. Keti Koti celebrates cultures that survived unimaginable oppression and recognizes the freedom people have today to express their heritage with pride. While there is still much work to be done to achieve freedom and justice for everyone, acknowledging progress is also an essential part of that journey.

The celebration was further enriched by the presence of Nazmi Türkkol, Council Administrator of Amsterdam Nieuw-West, who joined the gathering and shared a few words with attendees. Interactions like these reflect the importance of local institutions engaging with community-led commemorations and demonstrate the growing recognition of Keti Koti's significance, even as it awaits official status as a national holiday.

Keti Koti at Museumplein

Later that afternoon, I visited the larger Keti Koti Festival at Museumplein. Walking beneath the Rijksmuseum and emerging into the festival grounds was striking. In the heart of Amsterdam's museum district, thousands of people had gathered to commemorate a history that has often been overlooked within those very institutions until recently.

Rows of market stalls displayed handcrafted jewelry, vibrant clothing, artwork, and cultural goods as far as my eyes could see. Although it felt like a lot at first, I was able to quickly immerse myself in the festivities. I wandered through the crowd, joined a spontaneous reggaeton dance circle, and enjoyed fresh fruit alongside telo with bakkeljauw: a beloved Surinamese dish of fried cassava and salted fish.

What stood out to me most was the balance between celebration and remembrance. Bright fabrics and joyful music existed alongside visible reminders of history, with significant dates and figures displayed throughout the festival and woven into traditional clothing. The celebration never lost sight of what it was commemorating.

Although the gatherings in Nieuw-West and Museumplein differed greatly in size, they shared the same spirit. Both demonstrated that remembrance and celebration are not opposites: they coexist. Joy becomes an act of resilience, and community becomes a way of carrying history forward while imagining a more just future.

I would like to take the final part of my reflection to share something that lingered with me throughout the day. During the Nieuw-West celebration, Okuns shared his poem "BLACK JOY." As a museum rooted in public space and community, SAMA's role in hosting this gathering demonstrated how art can create places not only for expression, but also for remembrance, dialogue, and collective joy. I have attached Okuns' poem below:

BLACK JOY

By Okundaye Odahiagbon (Okuns)

Written April 22nd, 2026

We know how we get here to get here. We know where we were to get here to get there. Like the little light we allow to shine, this joy, our joy, the black joy, we let it shine.

We let our joy smile and let it laugh with us 'cause out of the mountain of despair and from the barren soil of our hope that was always less, it came to be.

What we have is the uneasy joy. Because it's hard, we choose to have it. A joy that wasn't promised, but was promised through pain to be painful. For our clap, song and dance to be complete, to have meaning, and to pray without ceasing, we pray with black joy.

With other joys, we have walked, with some joy we sleep, we dine and talk with others. But, in our black joy, that was deeply rooted in our spirit—the spiritual joy—a moral joy becomes where comfort is consoling.

The black joy is struggle and battle-tested. Born and bred, molded and formed—forged out of the bottomless pit—the black joy, our joy, becomes the joy that tells us to be somebody.

Works Consulted: IamExpat in the Netherlands. “What Is Keti Koti? How the Netherlands Commemorates the Abolition of Slavery in Suriname.” July 1, 2022. https://www.iamexpat.nl/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/what-keti-koti-how-netherlands-commemorates-abolition-slavery-suriname.