Hum Rights Review

DOI 10.1007/s12142-014-0320-8
BOOK REVIEW

Rainforest Warriors: Human Rights on Trial by Richard Price

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010
Michael S. Wilson*

Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Among liberal intellectuals in the North, there is a commonly held view of tribal and indigenous
peoples as victims of the international political economy and the neoliberal model of resource
extraction. A less common perspectivedespite its condemnation of ongoing colonialism and its
refusal to accept the post-colonial states attempt to assimilate all othersdoes not
essentialize and victimize them, but instead demonstrates who they are, how they see
themselves and their surroundings, and what they choose to do. Instead of victims, the second
perspective sheds light on humans and their efforts to not merely resist an imposed world order
and vision of development, but also pursue their own alternatives.
Falling within the second perspective and carving its own genre therein, Richard Prices
Rainforest Warriors is a story about extraordinary people who, because of their special
relationship to their forest and the multiplying threats against it, used the Inter- American
framework of human rights law to enact social change, the ripples of which will reach far beyond
their particular communities. Throughout, the book crosses several thresholds: between the fields
of legal studies and anthropology, between the study of institutions and of the humans who
construct and are shaped by them, and between the cases for environmental sustainability and
human rights. In encapsulating an anthropological analysis of a legal case, as well as a study into
the lives of Saramakas who pushed international jurisprudence to a new high, Rainforest
Warriors is a vessel that carries an example for others to use, challenge, and improve.
The first half of the book supplies both a decolonizing historiography of the Saramaka people
Surinamese Maroons, or descendants of self-liberated slavesas well as deep insights into the
relationship between them and their bio-scape. This integral relationship is key to their final legal
case, for the Saramakas economic, social, spiritual, and cultural survival depends on it. During
the seventeenth century in the profitable Dutch colony of Suriname, Maroons escaped from
coastal plantations to the forest, where they learned to depend on nothing other than each other
and their natural environment. After repeated and failed attempts at recolonization, the Dutch
administration was forced to recognize the Maroons territorial sovereignty in 1762.
However, since decolonization, the Surinamese state has often breached this sacred oath. Among
such violations, two particular cases were adjudicated by the Inter-American Commission of

Human Rights (IACHR) and its Court after the victims exhausted all attempts to access justice
through the State. The first, heard in 1992, involved a military assault in which more than 20
Maroons were arbitrarily tortured, many of whom were then killed, and secretly buried (66); the
second, heard in 2005, concerned the butchering of at least 39 Maroons, mainly women and
children, at the hands of military death squads and under the excuse of an internal conflict
against armed rebels (84). Both of these cases, which the plaintiffs won, set new precedents for
the still-budding Inter-American human rights framework. Moreover, they set the stage for a
third trial, heard in 2007, regarding the deforestation of Saramaka territories at the hands of
Chinese logging companies, which operated with the full consent of the Surinamese government.
Starting with Saramakas encounter with the logging companies and their guards, and following
their efforts at organizing communities and requesting the intervention of the IACHR, the second
half of the book produces a careful and dense description of this third case, including the trial
proceedings. When necessary, the narrative summarizes the technical and legalese, butmuch
more than thatit also furnishes details and insights excluded from official documents. Indeed,
this book demonstrates that ethnography can put a legal dispute into human context with great
effect; Prices methods of conducting social science aptly lent themselves to describing and
interpreting the many symbolic events behind the Courts favorable ruling.
In the final chapter and afterword, Price, consistent in his comprehensiveness, presents three
critical insights. First is a review of the states actions in reticent compliance and open defiance
of the Courts mandate, accompanied by criticisms of the Courts ability to enforce its verdict.
The second is the authors outline of at least 14 current hotspots of ongoing socioenvironmental conflicts related to indigenous or tribal peoples rights in Suriname (227). Thirdly,
the book ends with a discussion of the verdicts implications for the rest of the Americas.
A crucial element of this work is its interrogation of the efficacy of international law. At every
turn, Prices argument begs the question: how and to what extent can a predominantly Western
framework of human rights law attain justice for those most excluded from Western institutions?
At least from the authors perspective, the Court often fell short of recognizing the legitimacy of
cultural difference and ethnic autonomy. In questioning the efficacy of the law, and providing
illustrative answers, the book crosses yet another threshold: one between a human rights
advocacy perspective and a critical eye towards ethnocentricity in our universal mechanisms of
justice.
However, the cultural, political, and legal limitations of the IACHR are not insurmountable; they
only emphasize the importance of the groundwork done by not only community activists, but
also social and even natural scientists, whose research, documentation, and expert testimony can
further bridge the gaps between the everyday realities of the peoples and ecosystems under
threat, and the rigid structure and limited power of the laws meant to protect them.
The power of law ultimately rests with the people who decide to wield it, and Price demonstrates
this with clever multidimensionality, for ethnography is both the method of acquiring data and
the completed output; it is the story and its contents. Additionally, it is also the many cases that
will launch as a result of its example. This is why Rainforest Warriors is, for activists and jurists,
a lesson; for perpetrators of human rights violations, a warning; and for academics, journalists,

and anyone else whose career depends on fieldwork, a hope that our work can one day
reciprocate the favors of our host communities and study subjects.

(*) M. S. Wilson
Politics Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High St, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
E-mail: miswilso@ucsc.edu

This book review was published by the Human Rights Review on the June 2014 issue, and is property
of Springer Science+Business Media (DOI 10.1007/s12142-014-0320-8). The publication is also
available online at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12142-014-0320-8#page-1.