Indigenous Mapmaking, or Bringing a Dead Map to Life
Two Indigenous Marind clan representatives peruse a map of their customary territories produced by local village members. Sophie Chao Excerpted from In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-…
Author: Sophie Chao
Allying With Parasites to Fight Industrial Oil Palm
A Ganoderma fungus epidemic attacks oil palm trees at a plantation in Indonesian-controlled West Papua. Sophie Chao In October 2019, I traveled through an oil palm monocrop with…
What’s Left Unsaid When a Language Dies
“Transition” by Papua New Guinean artist Philemon Yalamu. From Papua New Guinea: A New Dawn by Fondazione Imago Mundi/Luciano Benetton Collection. A Death in the Rainforest: How a Languag…
When Crisis Brings Us Closer: Reflecting on Family, Fieldwork, and Faraway Homes in the COVID-19 Pandemic by Sophie Chao
As the COVID-19 pandemic gains momentum, various forms and scales of lockdown and self-quarantine are being imposed across the world to halt the spread of the virus. With…
Corporate “Sorcerers” Reveal the Magical Power of Capitalism
The destruction of forests contributes to widespread drought through atmospheric processes that can seem like sorcery. Pixabay/Pexels To Indigenous Marind communities living in West Papua…
Is Hunger Culture-Bound? by Sophie Chao
Over the last decade, indigenous Marind communities in the rural district of Merauke, West Papua, have seen vast swaths of their forests and savannas razed to make way…
“There Are No Straight Lines in Nature” – Making Living Maps in West Papua
Droning destruction — aerial view of deforestation in Merauke. Source: Sophie Chao. (Un)settling the Scene Alongside melting glaciers, marine oil spills and sinking islands, large-scale monocrop p…
In Deforestation’s Wake, Wild Animals Turn Troublesome
Clear-cutting of forests in West Papua for large-scale oil palm cultivation is in some cases turning local wildlife into orphans, reshaping the relationship between local communities and the envi…
Elusive Caimans and the Anthropologist as Devil
books and arts Lucas Bessire. 2014. Behold the Black Caiman: A Chronicle of Ayoreo Life. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 296 pages. Dust In this poignant and…