Publisher's Synopsis
For centuries past, forest resources have formed the basis of the livelihood of the Kwara'ae people of Malaita in Solomon Islands. This book describes some of their traditional knowledge about the forest. It is a study in material culture and ethnobotany, focusing on the uses which the Kwara'ae people make of their forest environment and its products. It is also an exercise in the development of a Pacific Islands literature, being written in both the English and Kwara'ae languages. The two authors bring the very different perspectives of a Kwara'ae community activist and an English anthropologist to the project of documenting this traditional knowledge. Most books about tropical forests, and local knowledge of them, are written by botanists from a Western scientific perspective. But the culture of science is very different from that of most tropical forest peoples. In this volume the authors attempt to present the botanical knowledge of the Kwara'ae people in terms that reflect their own culture. The questions raised by this approach are considered in an academic introduction.;An important contribution to the expanding research field of traditional ecological knowledge, of increasing value to environmental and development studies in tropical forest regions like the Pacific Islands, this volume should be of interest to anthropological and botanical specialists and should provide a valuable reference for forest conservation and management specialists.
