Wounaan Indigenous people have opposed illegal rosewood logging and centuries of exploitation with wisdom and beauty
We highlight ways to celebrate Wounaan wisdom, joy, beauty and resistance while discussing centuries of taking from Indigenous communities.
For centuries, the Wounaan people in Panama and Colombia have skillfully crafted various woods, with a particular fondness for rosewood, known for its vibrant hues and fine texture. Cocobolo rosewood, Dalbergia retusa, is particularly cherished for carving ceremonial staffs used in traditional medicine and art depicting tropical flora and fauna.
In recent years, global demand for rosewood surged beyond legal supplies, rendering it a sought-after investment, especially during China's real estate boom. By 2012, cocobolo's value in China skyrocketed to over $13,000 per cubic meter, making it an expensive material compared to red oak, which cost around $1,500 per cubic meter.
In 2011, illegal loggers commenced cutting rosewood trees in the Wounaan's mature forests in eastern Panama. Despite living in these lands for generations, the Wounaan and Emberá peoples lacked legal rights to these forested territories. The Wounaan authorities, elected by their communities, promptly filed legal complaints with local and national Panamanian officials, seeking support from the media and public.
This was merely the beginning of a four-year intense battle between illegal loggers and Wounaan community members. A logger even killed an elected traditional authority, hapk'ʌʌn Aquilino Opua Puchicama, sparking a retaliatory killing of the logger, Ezequiel Batista.
The illegal logging persisted for four years, ultimately making Panama the 16th-largest supplier of rosewood to China in 2014, exporting $55.5 million worth of it. By 2019, cocobolo was classified as "critically endangered" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, marking a stark contrast to its status as "vulnerable" with a high extinction risk in the wild before the rosewood boom.
The development of 'traceability' through physical tags with barcodes to monitor loggers, regulators, and customers never effectively prevented illegal logging in Panama. To share the comprehensive research, an effort was made to compile it into a book, "Interwoven Rosewood: Collaborative Ecologies, Colonial Entanglements, and Indigenous Resistance," a collaboration between the Wounaan National Congress, the Wounaan Local Congress of the Majé Community, and a university professor studying the environment and conservation with communities.
The book aims to present a holistic narrative encompassing the global rosewood trade, the Wounaan experience, ancestral wisdom, and the ongoing attacks on Indigenous lives and land.
Written by urgent.news from The Conversation's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
