Who is Amazonia? The ‘salt of the matter’ for indigenous sustainability

The recent article ‘Ash salts and bodily affects: Witoto environmental knowledge as sexual education’ (Echeverri and Román-Jitdutjaãno 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 015008) considers indigenous people and their distinctive knowledge systems in the western Amazon. These complex systems provide richly detailed practical knowledge about life in these tropical forests, which today many see as well populated and rich in cultural heritage. Through a careful analysis of ash salts and salt-making and the technologies and bodily affects associated with it, the authors suggest native Amazonian peoples see environmental knowledge not in terms of natural resources but instead how they interact with and produce human bodies in social networks, as a form of sexual education and, by extension, public health. It also highlights the critical importance of social relations as part of research, and the politics of nature, with important implications for contemporary debate and research on biodiversity, sustainability, climate change and human rights, specifically what types of agreements are entailed in scientific research that is not only robust but socially responsible.