Nafanua: Saving the Samoan Rain Forest

Paul Alan Cox has been honored worldwide for his work as an ethnobotanist, searching for plants that can be used to cure breast cancer, AIDS, and other diseases. Cox was recently hailed by Time magazine as a "hero of medicine" and awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for his work in Samoa, where in one year he made important ethnobotanical discoveries, gained official protection for a rare species of flying fox, launched an international campaign to save a 30,000-acre rain forest from logging, and then helped to rebuild a village destroyed by a hurricane.

In Nafanua, Cox describes his experiences in Samoa, where he studied traditional rain forest remedies with native healers and was honored by the villagers of Falealupo with the chiefly title of Nafanua, the legendary goddess who saved Samoa. A gifted storyteller, Cox describes a world that is an amalgam of the indigenous and the industrial, where ancient beliefs and communal values coexist with Jeeps, SPAM, and transistor radios. In addition to describing his research, Cox discusses the historic misperception of the South Seas, early explorers, and missionaries, who today are more often ecological than religious. A beautifully written story of scientific and personal discovery, Nafanua is a testament to the power of nature to both heal and destroy - and to the equally powerful human capacity for faith and perseverance against seemingly impossible odds.