Book excerpt: The ancestral rain forests for the Wopkaimin people have long been a sacred geography, a place that has allowed them to act out the obligations of the male cult system and social relations of production based on kinship. Today the people and their place are suffering disastrous consequences from the sudden imposition of one of the worlds largest mining projects, which has brought about severe social and ecological disruptions. Based on fieldwork spanning more than a decade, David Hyndmans book traces the extraordinary socioecological transformation of a traditional society confronting modern technological risk. Across the island of New Guinea, the clash between the simple reproduction and subsistence production system of indigenous peoples and the expanded production and private accumulation system of mining has resulted in environmental degradation.