Sophie Chao is a Discovery Early Career Research Award fellow and lecturer in anthropology at the University of Sydney in Australia. Her anthropological and interdisciplinary research investigates the intersections of Indigeneity, ecology, capitalism, health, and justice in the Pacific. Chao previously worked for the human rights organization Forest Peoples Programme in Indonesia, supporting the rights of forest-dwelling Indigenous peoples to their customary lands, resources, and livelihoods. Her forthcoming book, In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua, received the Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award in 2021.
In a new book, an anthropologist explores how oil palm plantations in West Papua are upending Indigenous Marind communities' ways of life. In this excerpt, Marind villagers call upon their plant and animal kin to confront a map used by the oil palm industry.
Deep in Papua New Guinea, the speakers of Tayap have stopped using their native tongue. In A Death in the Rainforest, an anthropologist recounts his journey over three decades to find out why.
A company’s appropriation of an Indigenous ritual highlights the power of businesses to destroy traditions, community ties, and ecosystems.
In West Papua, Indonesia, both conventional and “green” palm oil projects dispossess and exclude Indigenous people from their lands.
The destruction wrought by the expansion of large-scale oil palm plantations in West Papua is transforming once-wild animals into problematic pets.
