An Interview with Linda Spalding, Part Two
Linda Spalding is a writer and adventurer. For her book The Follow she travelled to the unfamiliar lands of Indonesia to learn more about the work of orangutan activist Birtué Galdikas. When I interviewed her in 1998, we talked about writing and travelling, and how the two interconnect.
Kirman: On a broader scale, are those things you personally discovered reasons why this story is important to the world in general?
Spalding: If this story is important to the world it is because I think we have to understand the ambiguities involved in everything we try and do. There aren't "good guys" and "bad guys." We have to be very conscious of our actions, particularly where we go into places where we do not necessarily fit. All those questions about who's responsibility the natural world is interest me. I heard an Indonesian minister of, I forgot, maybe forestry, on TV the other night, saying, "Well, you all want us to be the lungs of the world, but we have as much right to develop as you did." All of those kinds of questions interest me, and I think that Galdikas went in there thinking that she had the answers, and the thing that I learned is that she doesn't have the answers. Probably nobody has the answers. What we really have to do is be terribly, terribly thoughtful about everything that we do. Although I say that the Indonesian government is a corrupt government I can also say that they are trying to bend into place some very good conservation laws and we have to be careful not to simply ignore them, which she, in fact, has done upon occasion. So, we still have this sort of colonial mentality that we have the answers, and I don't think we do.
Kirman: Do you feel this is a subject matter you are going to follow up on?
Spalding: I think I'll probably always be involved just because I can't help it. I subscribe to Primate-Talk on my email and I can't seem to unsubscribe now! I'm wanting to know what's going on. I'm working on a book with Riska, who was my a guide, a young Dayak woman from Borneo. I'm editing her life story which she is writing, so I think I have a lifetime relationship with her. I'm probably going to know her forever. So, it's certainly enlarged my personal boundaries.
Kirman: Do you want to do other projects like this where you go out into the field and experience things firsthand?
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