In honor of Reed Lee Wadley.(MEMORIALS)

Sometime before June 1992, I had heard about a brief study by a doctoral student, Reed Wadley, on the impact of roads in the area of Danau Sentarum Wildlife Reserve. My husband, 10-year old son, and I were headed up the Kapuas River to work in that area of West Kalimantan, Indonesia, and I had a clear plan to be on the lookout for Reed. After hours and hours of travel in an over-burdened speedboat, zooming around the Danau Sentarum Wildlife Reserve, in search of the perfect spot for a field center, our group of conservation folks arrived at the edge of the village of Lanjak, on the northern edge of the Reserve. In the process of reporting to the local camat (sub-district head), we encountered Reed--who was also excited to run into us.

He and I immediately hit it off and began discussing our respective plans for ethnographic (and other) research in the area, and how we might collaborate--as we sat side by side on the camat's couch. My most vivid memory of that meeting was when, for some reason, I unthinkingly mentioned how "tall" we westerners were in comparison to Indonesians. I remember the perplexed look on his face, as his 5'5" height (the same as mine) gradually dawned on me. He wasn't used to thinking of himself as "tall," and I--long resident in Indonesia--hadn't noticed that he would be considered short in America.

That brief meeting was the beginning of a close and enduring friendship. We immediately realized our shared concerns about both people and forests; and quickly divided up the ethnographic tasks, with him focusing on the Iban and me on the Melayu; him on the periphery and me in the center of the nature reserve (now Danau Sentarum National Park). However, he understood my special interest in Dayak life, based on my long experience with the Uma' Jalan Kenyah in East Kalimantan; and he was generous enough to help me also gain some understanding of the Iban. We planned and implemented a whole series of comparative studies of both groups, from time allocation to use of nontimber forest products, to agricultural land use, to hunting; and we brainstormed about how best to involve both ethnic groups in more effective conservation efforts. After about a year, my husband and I despaired of getting the kind of support from our employers we needed to do a good job of collaborative management with local communities; and we moved on. Reed stayed on in the area, finishing his dissertation and cementing familial ties with the members of "his" longhouse in Sungai Sedik (including blood brotherhood with Umping, a colorful and intelligent Iban politician and businessman). He also came home with a back totally covered with wonderful Iban tattoos--something that impressed my own son so much he followed Reed's example!

I went to work for the Bogor-based Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in 1994, and he headed back to the U.S., first to finish his dissertation at Arizona State University in Tempe, then to investigate Dutch historical materials on the Iban in Leiden, the Netherlands. He finally settled at the University of Missouri, where he continued his focus on the Iban, and taught until his death in June 2008. In the meantime, he married an anthropologist, Oona Paredes, and had a lovely son, Lucas.

We maintained contact, analyzing our research ...