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Plants and Animals in the Life of the Kuna (ILAS Translations from Latin America Series)

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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."