Biography: Adiante Franszoon was born in the interior of Suriname along the Brazilian border. He was raised in the Saramacca Maroon tribe, in one of many communities established by former slaves who moved from the coast of Suriname to the Amazon rain forest in the early 1700s. He learned to carve when he was a young boy growing up in the village of Dangogo. He came to the United States in the early 1970s to get an American education. He presently resides in Baltimore, Maryland where he carries on the traditional Maroon carving of his ancestors.