Why am I passionate about this?
I discovered birds rather late in life, almost by accident, as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching in a small western Ethiopian town, an experience that stimulated my passion to know all kinds of birds and, in the process, to know the people and places where they lived. My ultimate career choice of ethnobiology, combining cognitive and environmental analysis, was a perfect synthesis of my various scholarly passions. My subsequent studies of Mayan and Zapotec Indian communities in Mexico and Native North American communities in the Pacific Northwest broadened the scope of my research to include all kinds of animals, plants, and fungi, all the living things we share with Indigenous people.
Eugene's book list on Indigenous Natural History
Why did Eugene love this book?
Snorkeling in a Hawaiian reef took on new dimensions for me in reading this book. Johannes–a noted fisheries biologist–went to Palau in Micronesia to study the breeding biology of tropical reef fishes. There, he came to deeply appreciate the extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the local subsistence fishermen who had contributed to his research. Their expert knowledge of the behavior and breeding cycles of local reef fishes was hard-earned through a lifetime of careful observation in pursuit of their livelihood.
By contrast, the expert knowledge of Johannes and his academic colleagues was broad but shallow. Combining Indigenous and academic expertise enhanced both. We also learn how Palauan communities conserved the resources of their reefs, practices disrupted by colonial administrations.
2 authors picked Words of the Lagoon as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Words of the Lagoon is an account of the pioneering work of a marine biologist to discover, test, and record the knowledge possessed by native fisherman of the Palau Islands of Micronesia.