ABOUT THIS BOOKInterweaving Rosewood is a collaborative exploration of the global rosewood trade and its entanglements with Indigenous lifeways, colonial histories, and environmental crises. Co-authored by Julie Velásquez Runk and members of the Wounaan National Congress and its Local Congress of the Majé community, this book traces the story of cocobolo rosewood from Wounaan lands in Panama to international markets, revealing how centuries of settler colonialism and extractive capitalism continue to shape landscapes, livelihoods, and relationships. At its heart, the book is a meditation on well-being and belonging—how people live in relation to land, each other, and the more-than-human world.
Drawing on more than a decade of community-based research and six collaborative book workshops, the authors weave together first-person narratives, ecological analysis, historical context, and Indigenous knowledge. The result is a richly textured account that challenges dominant narratives of environmental degradation by centering Wounaan experiences of joy, resistance, and conviviality. The book’s structure reflects its method: interwoven chapters authored or spoken by Wounaan colleagues, grounded in consent protocols and shaped by ancestral storytelling traditions.
Accessibly written, Interweaving Rosewood is ideal for courses in environmental conservation, Indigenous studies, anthropology, Latin American studies, and political ecology. With its interdisciplinary reach and classroom-ready discussion questions, the book invites readers to reflect on the global forces behind environmental catastrophe—and the enduring power of Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and becoming.
REVIEWS“Expansive in both space and time, this captivating book takes you into the ecologically and culturally rich forests of the Darien and halfway around the world. With short chapters authored by diverse voices, the book weaves together ecology, history, and anthropology to provide insights into the myriad forces that have shaped and continue to shape interactions between humans and nature at local to global scales.”—Dr. Liza Comita, Yale University
“Relatively few scholarly books transcend the usual barriers that divide and exclude academic disciplines, audiences, and public interests. This book does so beautifully by inviting readers of all kinds to glimpse the Wounaan people of Panama through uplifting first-person narratives and no-nonsense accounts of their historical struggles involving rosewood trees, especially cocobolo rosewood (Dalbergia retusa). Based in deep and long-term interdisciplinary research and communicated through diverse voices, it takes us on a journey from the demand of ‘cocobolo fever’ in East Asian markets to its supply through rampant logging of cocobolo rosewood in Wounaan lands, with all the disheartening and uplifting turns involving land rights, environmental degradation, and exploitation of natural resources.”—James R. Welch, author of Persistence of Good Living: A’uwẽ Life Cycles and Well-Being in the Central Brazilian Cerrados
“In the history of global capitalism, certain commodities take the center stage. Yet, as the rosewood fever shows, nonhumans are always more than their commodity form. In gathering global and Indigenous stories about life in the Panamanian forest and beyond, this book reminds us that histories of environmental depletion and care are inevitably open-ended.”—Piergiorgio Di Giminiani, author of Sentient Lands: Indigeneity, Property, and Political Imagination in Neoliberal Chile— -