Illegal rosewood logging surged into Wounaan ancestral forests in eastern Panama in the 2010s, colliding with a people whose artistry and traditional medicine have long relied on cocobolo, Dalbergia retusa. A new collaborative project chronicles how Wounaan responded by asserting rights, documenting abuses and foregrounding ancestral science and shared stewardship.
For generations, Wounaan carvers have shaped cocobolo into ceremonial staffs and commercial artworks that feature tropical flora and fauna. They are among many communities worldwide that use rosewoods for items such as gunstocks, furniture and musical instruments. More than 140 tree species are traded as rosewoods, valued for dense, lustrous, often reddish timber.
Global demand began to outstrip legal supply in the late 2000s as collectors and investors, particularly during China’s property boom, chased these woods. By 2012, cocobolo was selling in China for more than US$13,000 per cubic meter, and prices since have climbed to as much as triple that. By comparison, red oak sells for about US$1,500 per cubic meter.
In 2011, illegal logging expanded into mature forests where Wounaan live in eastern Panama. According to community leaders, most Wounaan and many Emberá communities lack legal title to those lands despite generations of residence. Elected Wounaan authorities lodged complaints with local and national officials and sought public attention as outsiders moved in to cut trees.
Tensions escalated. During the first season of incursions, a three-month standoff unfolded between community members and loggers. An elected traditional authority, hapk’ʌʌn Aquilino Opua Puchicama, was killed by logger Ezequiel Batista, who was then killed in response. The violence underscored how far traffickers would go to seize valuable timber.
The trade intensified for four years. In 2014, Panama ranked 16th among rosewood suppliers to China, exporting US$55.5 million in timber. Cocobolo, previously listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as vulnerable, was reassessed as critically endangered by 2019.
Illegal rosewood logging in a wider frame
The new book, Interwoven Rosewood: Collaborative Ecologies, Colonial Entanglements, and Indigenous Resistance, brings together years of research by the Wounaan National Congress (Wounaan Podpa Nʌm Pömaam), the Wounaan Local Congress of the Majé Community (Wir Haigpai Podpa Nʌm Majé), and a university-based collaborator focused on community-led conservation. The project shares global rosewood dynamics alongside what unfolded in Panama, presenting Wounaan experiences and ancestral science against a history of assaults on Indigenous land and life.
The authors aim to reach a broad audience by interlacing global market pressures with local accounts, and by presenting Wounaan knowledge on its own terms. This approach places the community’s values, practices and perspectives at the center of the narrative.
Cultivating collaboration
Wounaan social life emphasizes tending relationships and redistributing resources such as food, money and knowledge to promote equity. Project partners say this ethos runs counter to extractivist logics that can pervade illegal timbering and even academic research.
To avoid extractive research practices, Wounaan and non-Wounaan collaborators planned the work jointly and focused on wide public sharing rather than publishing mainly for academic audiences. A formal research agreement recognized Wounaan data sovereignty and the right to determine how information would be used.
Interweaving themes
Drawing on Wounaan basketry as a guide, the project weaves three inseparable strands: lowland tropical environments, Wounaan ancestral wisdom and science, and the interlocked forces of capitalism and colonialism. The authors argue these cannot be understood in isolation.
Recognizing the past in the present and future
Wounaan ancestral stories inform contemporary life and future choices. One creation account, for example, includes guidance from the Creator on correcting initial mistakes in forming humans, underscoring the value of revision and improvement. The authors compare early colonial gold extraction to modern rosewood exploitation by 21st century entrepreneurs, highlighting continuity across eras.
Celebrating relationships
Conviviality, or respectful interdependence among humans and nonhumans, shapes everyday Wounaan life. Carvers work with cocobolo’s grain, and the project frames animals, plants and other beings as communicative actors. A companion website by designer Mavila Trujillo employs illustration, audio and video, including Wounaan flute music about agouti seed dispersers and interactive elements such as a ringed kingfisher call that signals a visitor’s approach.
Respecting the experiences of many voices
Knowledge is grounded in lived experience. Elected authorities and community members nominated contributors based on their expertise, while families consented to include work from deceased colleagues. Two senior non-Indigenous contributors with decades of experience on Indigenous rights also participated.
Exposing colonialism and capitalism
The work details enduring harms from settler colonialism, including dispossession of land, erosion of languages and knowledge, and violence. It also examines how capitalism aligns with these forces through education, law, corporate practices, illicit trade and some conservation efforts. The record of resistance ranges from colonial-era uprisings to the use of drones to document land invasions for legal complaints, and protests against harmful legislation.
Showing liveliness in the Wounaan meu language
Wounaan meu highlights action and ongoing becoming. Translation into Spanish and English can flatten these nuances, so the team preserved meanings through careful word choices, distinguishing, for example, between “traditional doctor” and “shaman,” and rendering Wounaan meu “jap” as “pirogue.” Contributors recorded Wounaan meu materials and produced detailed transcriptions and translations to retain linguistic richness.
Nurturing joy and beauty
The project embraces self-determination and the joy that accompanies collective work, described as being in positive relations with others and joyfully working together. Forthcoming outputs include a Spanish edition with translator Alfonso Conde, a shorter Spanish-language volume centered on Wounaan-authored chapters, a study of Wounaan meu oral texts alongside written Spanish, and a multimedia site for Wounaan schoolchildren.
By centering Wounaan ancestral science and community collaboration, the book offers a counterpoint to illegal rosewood logging and the broader forces driving it, while mapping paths toward the futures Wounaan envision. For a related perspective in Spanish, see Wounaan resisten la tala de palo de rosa cocobolo.