Loretta A. Cormier, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research experiences include fieldwork among the Amazonian Guaj� hunter-gatherers, the Navajo, the Alabama Choctaw, and recently in Fiji. Her specializations are in cultural anthropology, historical ecology, ethnoprimatology, and medical anthropology. She has been teaching introductory cultural anthropology courses for fifteen years.