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Year: 2003
Author: Gary Paul Nabhan
Publisher: University of California Press.
ISBN: 0520217314 Pages: 350pp
Price: $34.95; £22.95
To Order: <http://www.ucpress.edu/books/>

The first thing that strikes you when you pick up Gary Paul Nabhan’s book, particularly if you are a bibliophile, is that the book itself is beautiful. The cover design, the hand drawings scattered throughout the text, the photos, even the typeface is aesthetically appealing. It struck me as someone’s labor of love, and it doesn’t take long in reading before you realize that the love is Nabhan’s and it is for the Seri Indians of the Sonora desert. A natural scientist by training, Nabhan’s work with and interest in the lives and plight of the Seri Indians has taken him into the realms of anthropology and human geography. In this book, he blends the natural, social and cultural aspects of his work in a fluid manner, and with considerable success. As such, there is plenty of fodder for those interested in reptiles and for those interested in people. However, by the end of the book, the reader is likely to be interested in both.

The book itself is about many things, and is divided into two sections. The second section is a listing of what is known about the herpetofauna of the region according to both traditional and Western scientific knowledge, and needs no further discussion in this review. It is the first section, consuming 223 of the 281 pages of text in the book, that is reviewed here. This first section is composed of eight chapters, and two main themes run through these: biogeography and ethnoecology. The biogeography of reptiles in the region and the influence of the Seri on this is the subject of earlier chapters (chapters 1-3). Ethnoecology, or what Nabhan defines as “what any cultural community knows of the diversity of ecological interactions involving humans and other lifeforms” (pg 159), is the subject of later chapters. Ethnoecology is seen in how the Seri name reptiles (chapter 4), their use of plants and herbs to treat venomous bites and other beliefs about reptiles as “resources, curses and cures” (chapter 5), their understanding of ecological interactions (chapter 6) and of conservation problems (chapter 7), and their representations of reptiles in art (various, and chapter 8). Chapter 9 addresses the issue of traditional ecological knowledge, threats to it, and recognition among the Seri of the need to preserve this.

Readers of the MTN are likely to be most interested in Seri attitudes toward and uses of sea turtles. These vary according to species and descriptions of them run throughout the book. Turtles have traditionally been both eaten (and their parts used in a variety of ways) and celebrated. One particularly astute observation made by Nabhan is of the tendency among students of cultural perceptions of wildlife to try to classify animals as perceived as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, as being ‘liked’ or ‘disliked’, dichotomies that “fail to express the true complexity and ambiguity of people’s attitudes about the natural world” (pg 126). Seri attitudes toward turtles illustrate this complexity nicely.

Nabhan is clearly an advocate for the Seri. Part of his purpose in writing this book may be to provide evidence of Seri intellectual property rights to potentially valuable remedies for snakebite, for example, and to support Seri claims as the legitimate and appropriate managers of their resources. To his credit, he is transparent about his advocacy, and describes in detail, for example, the assistance he has provided in Seri efforts to produce educational materials for school children to strengthen ties to traditional knowledge and culture. And yet, somehow, Nabhan does not romanticize the Seri nor overstate the threats to their cultural survival (of which there are many). Nevertheless, on finishing the book, many readers may lament the loss of the Seri people as much as they would the green turtles swimming in the Sea of Cortés.