Shadows in the Sun

Travels to Landscapes of Spirit and Desire

Wade Davis

• Publisher: Island Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781597263924
  9781559633543
• eBook ISBN:
  9781597267946
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Travel
• Index: Biological Sciences

Wade Davis has been called "a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life's diversity." In Shadows in the Sun, he brings all of those gifts to bear on a fascinating examination of indigenous cultures and the interactions between human societies and the natural world.

Ranging from the British Columbian wilderness to the jungles of the Amazon and the polar ice of the Arctic Circle, Shadows in the Sun is a testament to a world where spirits still stalk the land and seize the human heart. Its essays and stories, though distilled from travels in widely separated parts of the world, are fundamentally about landscape and character, the wisdom of lives drawn directly from the land, the hunger of those who seek to rediscover such understanding, and the consequences of failure.

As Davis explains, "To know that other, vastly different cultures exist is to remember that our world does not exist in some absolute sense but rather is just one model of reality. The Penan in the forests of Borneo, the Vodoun acolytes in Haiti, the jaguar Shaman of Venezuela, teach us that there are other options, other possibilities, other ways of thinking and interacting with the earth." Shadows in the Sun considers those possibilities, and explores their implications for our world.

Index

Abominable snowman, 72, 79–80

Abraham (Inuit relative), 14, 24, 26–28

Acid rain, 113

Adaptability and Inuit peoples, 20

Adelaide Peninsula, 19

Admiralty Inlet, 11, 13

Admixtures, 163–64, 186, 194–95

Africa, 53–54, 160–61

Agriculture, U.S. Department of, 132

Agroforestry system, sustainable, 116

Agwe (Vodoun spirit of the sea), 55

Albert, Eddie, 258–59

Algae bloom, 13

Algonquin Indians, 168, 187–88

Allen, Benedict, 210

Amahuaca peoples, 168

Amazon river/forest:

branches forming the river at Manaus, 105–6

cattle, growing, 115

diversity of life, 107

ethnobotany, 116–19, 121–22

fire ants and cecropia tree, 107–8

food originating from, 120–21

history behind, 105

human societies, destruction of, 116

leafcutter ants, 108

lily, giant, 108–9

logging, 111–13

nutrient load of the ecosystem, 111

pollination mechanisms, 109–10

rainfall and Cordilleran glaciers driving the system, 106

scale and magnitude, 104–7

shamanic healing, 142–43

sloth, three-toed, 110

see also Hallucinogens; Rain forests of North America, coastal temperate

Americas and hallucinogens, 160, 162–63, 167

see also Hallucinogens

Animals harvested for resources, 15–16

Animistic religions, 55

Ants, 107–8

Aputani peoples, 72, 73

Arawakan Indians, 50, 126

Arctic, the, 14

see also Inuit peoples

Arun River, 68, 74

Asia, Southeast, 123

see also China; Rubber

Asociación de Naturalistas Evangelicas del Peru, 184

Atwood, Margaret, 241

Audubon, James, 272–73

Australia, 220–21

Automobile companies and rubber, 126

Ayahuasca (hallucinogen), 155–58, 163, 164, 166, 168

Ayida Wedo (Vodoun rainbow), 56

Babui (bearded wild pig), 37

Bacterium, 114

Baffin, William, 18

Baffin Bay/Island, 11, 13, 23, 26

Balzac, Honoré de, 93

Baram River, 30, 32

Barasana Indians, 155–58, 162–63

Bear, new species of, 80, 81

Bear, The (film), 95–96

...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Hunters of the Northern Ice
• Dreams of a Jade Forest
• The White Darkness
• The Clouded Leopard
• Passion in the Desert
• The Forests of Amazonia
• White Blood of the Forest
• The Art of Shamanic Healing
• Plants of the Gods
• Cactus of the Four Winds
• Smoking Toad
• Breaking Trail
• In the Shadow of Red Cedar
• The End of the Wild
• Index