The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World.

Wade Davis. Toronto, ON: House of Anansi Press, 2009. 262pp.

Reviewed by Douglas Reeser

University of South Florida
Department of Anthropology
10-24-2009

In a time when the topic of climate change continues to make headlines while remaining
a hotly debated subject (Nguyen 2009), Wade Davis has presented a refreshingly new way for
the western world to address the problem – by turning to indigenous cultures that have
maintained unique means of interacting with and preserving the environment around them. The
Wayfinders is the most recent book from Davis, an anthropologist and ethnobotanist who trained
under the famed ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes at Harvard. Davis left the world of
academia but continued with his anthropological research, and he has produced a number of
best-selling books for a more popular audience. He is currently Explorer-in-Residence at the
National Geographic Society, where he continues to research, write, photograph, and make films.
In The Wayfinders, Davis uses his highly readable and detailed prose to describe unique
examples of indigenous knowledge as it relates to local environments around the world. He
begins the book by describing the intensity of language loss around the globe and explains how
language loss also threatens indigenous knowledge and cultural diversity. His argument echoes
the statement on the subject previously put forth by the United Nations Economic and Social
Council (2008:4):
Indigenous languages are treasures of vast traditional knowledge concerning ecological
systems and processes and how to protect and use some of the most vulnerable and
biologically diverse ecosystems in the world. It is no coincidence that the areas where
indigenous peoples live are the areas that contain the greatest biological diversity. In fact,
biological, linguistic and cultural diversity are inseparable and mutually reinforcing, so
when an indigenous language is lost, so too is the traditional knowledge for how to
maintain aspects of the world’s biological diversity. The protection of indigenous
languages is therefore not only a cultural and moral imperative, but an important aspect of
global efforts to address biodiversity loss, climate change and other environmental
challenges.

This statement forms the basis of Davis’ argument, wherein he uses specific ethnographic
examples to detail the complexity and depth of indigenous knowledge held by groups from such
diverse regions as the rain forests of Malaysia, the mountains of Colombia, the deserts of Africa,
and the islands of the South Pacific. For instance, one of his first ethnographic stories details the
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knowledge of a Hawaiian ‘wayfinder’, a traditional navigator of the Pacific. “The navigator must
process an endless flow of data, intuitions, and insights derived from observation and the
dynamic rhythms and interactions of wind, waves, clouds, stars, sun, moon, the flight of birds, a
bed of kelp, the glow of phosphorescence on a shallow reef” (Davis 2009:60). This information
is not recorded by the wayfinder, it is stored and recalled from memory, and is thus passed orally
to the novice. The wayfinder is but one example of the complexity that indigenous knowledge
can take, built from generations of interaction with particular environments.
With each example of indigenous knowledge that Davis uses, he also shares a brief
historical background to underscore the threat to survival that exists for each group and its
associated knowledge, yet his argument could be stronger. He often notes the destructive nature
of colonization, and he discusses the present day pressures faced by each group. These pressures
are often a direct result of capitalist-based globalization that is expanding to the most remote
corners of the globe, the very locations of many of Davis’ examples. This is perhaps where The
Wayfinders could be strengthened. It is not until chapter 4 – halfway through the book – that
Davis explicitly discusses the contradictory nature of the capitalist endeavor with what may be
characterized as an indigenous worldview. Still, Davis falls short in what could be an
exceptionally strong argument. He uses a discussion of a proposed Canadian mining project on
traditionally indigenous-held lands to critique the capitalist worldview as linear and short
sighted, and one that destroys for profit as opposed to preserves for future generations (114-119).
He finishes this critique: “As long as there is a promise of revenue flows and employment, it
merely requires permission to proceed. We take this as a given for it is the foundation of our
system, the way commerce extracts value and profit in a resource-driven economy” (2009:119).
While this is a fine argument against such capitalist projects, Davis could further strengthen his
critique with a more fully Marxist discussion of how such projects might affect the indigenous
people involved. Will they be brought into the exploitative system of wage-labor? Will their
living conditions and health deteriorate? Will they be forcefully assimilated into the capitalist
culture, yet remain a marginalized population therein? Davis critiques these types of capitalist
ventures, and explains how they are ultimately harmful to the environment and contradictory to
an indigenous worldview, but he falls short in conveying to the reader the all-too-often negative
effects that result when a population is forced to transition to the capitalist economy.
Throughout the second half of the book, it is clear that Davis sees the effects of a capitalist
society on indigenous groups as consistently negative or harmful, and it could be argued that his
is a Marxist point of view. Yet he fails to fully detail the form that these negative effects often
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take. For instance, in a section discussing the coca plant and traditional Andean groups in Peru,
he touches on distinctly Marxist points: “The real issues of land distribution, economic
exploitation, and the persistence of debt peonage challenged the foundations of their own class
structure, so they [the Peruvian middle and upper classes] settled on coca as the culprit”
(2009:125). He fails, however, to discuss these issues in further depth, and instead the text moves
on to detail the history of coca use and its nutritional benefits.
He continues this approach for the rest of the book. Later, in chapter 5, Davis critiques
capitalist development policy (2009:171):
Ethnocide, the destruction of a people’s way of life, is in many quarters sanctioned and
endorsed as appropriate development policy. Modernity provides the rationale for
disenfranchisement, with the real goal too often being the extraction of natural resources on
an industrial scale from territories occupied for generations by indigenous peoples whose
ongoing presence on the land proves to be an inconvenience.

This makes for a compelling argument; however there is little mention of what
disenfranchisement means for the people who experience it. Here Davis is taking a distinctly
political-economic stance in his analysis (Roseberry 1988); however he only glosses over what
this means for the indigenous people themselves, besides a loss of their culture and cultural
knowledge. While this is a critical point that Davis is making, it may leave his audience
disconnected from the resulting experience of the very people he is discussing, which could be
just as crucial a point.
In the end, Davis argues that increasingly intense climate change events are the critical
reason why the western world needs to consider indigenous knowledge as an important resource
for humanity and for its insights into an alternative approach to living on the planet. Throughout
the book, indigenous peoples’ relationship to the environment around them is detailed as
drastically different from how most in the west view the environment. Davis shows that a deep
understanding of the natural world in its minute details is often crucial to the well being and
success of indigenous groups around the world. The Wayfinders is an engrossing read, full of
ethnographic experience, and accessible to a wide audience, and it ties two vital issues of the day
together. This is perhaps the greatest strength of the book – the under-discussed issues of
language, knowledge, and cultural loss is directly implicated in the headline-grabbing issue of
climate change. If this book is as widely read as some of his others, Davis may succeed in
bringing wide attention to the importance of preserving the alternative systems of being that still
exist around the globe.

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References Cited

Nguyen, Dong-Phuong
2009 Rising seas could be worse than expected, scientific group says during stop in Tampa. St
Petersburg Times. October 22. Electronic Document,
http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/water/rising-seas-could-be-worse-than-
expected-scientific-group-says-during-stop/1046077. Accessed October 22, 2009.

Roseberry, William
1988 Political Economy. Annual Review of Anthropology 17:161-185.

United Nations Economic and Social Council

2008 Report of the international expert group meeting on indigenous languages. Permanent
Forum on Indigenous Issues. Seventh Session. New York. 20pp.