Native Peoples and Environmental Conservation

Reviews of Plants and Animals in the Life of the Kuna and Indigenous Peoples and the Future of Amazonia
by Ron Mader

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What should books about indigenous peoples strive for - acceptance among academics or the native peoples themselves? If there is a way to strike a compromise, the authors of Plants and Animals in the Life of the Kuna, have found a way to bridge the gap.

This book focuses on Panama's indigenous Kuna people. The work, an environmental and artistic mosaic, is a collaboration among two Kuna biologists and a Panamanian colleague. Illustrations by Kuna artists Ologuagdi and Enrique Tejada provide a clear portal for curious outsiders.

The authors document a variety of factors that contribute to environmental degradation, including abuses of the market economy, population growth, and careless practices. Being native to a region does not imply omnipotence.

"The Kuna, like the indigenous peoples of North America who enthusiastically killed beaver so that Europeans could wear tall hats, have been drawn into a system vastly larger and more powerful than their own society," writes James Howe in the book's forward. "If they are to survive as a people into the next century, they must reconcile the subsistence and market economies as well as protect the borers of their small enclave."

The earth is the mother of all things, the Great Mother. She is the guardian who caringly watches over all that exists. She has burba and we live on her.
- Cacique General Enrique Guerrero, p. 1

As environmental educators, we are aware that no one loves what she or he has not learned to understand, that one has to want to protect the environment. To want to protect the environment, one must first understand what needs to be protected.
- Jorge Ventocilla, p. 6

The commercial exploitation of lobsters in Kuna Yala has given rise to many polemics... Everything changed at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s when small planes from Panama City began to arrive to buy lobster at Comarca. At first, buyers, fearing the reaction of the Kuna, were cautious and came infrequently (once every week or two). Large scale commercialization began in 1984. In 1994, there were daily flights, even on Sunday.
- Olaidi, p. 57

It would seem that when a plant or animal can be converted into money, human beings forget their cultural principles. Not everyone is willing to stand up for the principles that the elders in the Congress House sing about in the evenings. But, who is going to speak for the turtles if not the Kuna themselves. Are the lobster, the fish and the turtle in the sea to satisfy our needs or our ambitions?
- Jorge Ventocilla with Olaidi, p. 66

Sponsel mentions that an earnest attempt was made to include authors from the nine Amazonian countries. However, in the end, only three of the authors are from South America.

Perhaps I'd hoped for a more activist approach, or at least, a ground-based examination of current environmental practices and potential strategies. Instead, this is a scholarly book which sticks its nose in the pages of future academic research and does not appear to be looking up. The book provides no action plan and few resources or contacts for interested readers.

Still, in its own way, this is an interesting volume and offers more than a handful of insightful gems.

In Amazonia, in various ways, indigenes are to a large extent the key to environmental ethics, ecological knowledge, sustainable land and resource use and management, and the conservation of biodiversity, ecosystems, and wildlife. Anthropologists may make some contribution toward the survival of the people and ecosystems of the increasingly endangered world of the Amazon.
- Leslie Sponsel, p 283

Since we offer our knowledge and experience to scientific research, we have the right to demand solutions to the new problems created by the same societies that want our knowledge.
- Simeon Jimenez, p. viii

The binational (Colombia-Ecuador) project proposes an "Awa reserve." Even so, the Awa are aware that their participation is necessary at every level of decision making in order to ensure that their interests and priorities are met. These may not always coincide with the goals of one or both governments, of private sector interests, or of environmental and scientific entities also involved in the project.
- Janet Chernela, p. 258

On the whole, it is evident that a vast number of peoples of the Third World has shared inequitably in the aggregate demands of development. Of these, native Amazonians have been among those benefiting the least.
- Emilio Moran, p. 88

Title Info:

Plants and Animals in the Life of the Kuna
by Jorge Ventocilla, Heraclio Herrera and Valerio Nunez
University of Texas Press, 1995, $25 cloth; $12.95 paperback

Indigenous Peoples and the Future of Amazonia:
An ecological anthropology of an endangered world, edited by Leslie E. Sponsel
University of Arizona Press, $50

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