Laura Rival is Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Oxford. She has written a number of ethnographic articles and papers on the Huaorani of Ecuador and the Makushi of Guyana. She is the editor of "The Social Life of Trees: Anthropological Approaches to Tree Symbolism" and the co-editor of "Beyond the Visible and the Material: the Amerindianization of Society in the Work of Peter Rivire."