<p>Michael Uzendoski&apos;s theoretically informed work analyzes value from the perspective of the Napo Runa people of the Amazonian Ecuador. </p><br><p>Based upon historical and archival research, as well as the author&apos;s years of fieldwork in indigenous communities, <i>The Napo Runa of Amazonian Ecuador</i>presents theoretical issues of value, poetics, and kinship as linked to the author&apos;s intersubjective experiences in Napo Runa culture. Drawing on insights from the theory of gift and value, Uzendoski argues that Napo Runa culture personifies value by transforming things into people through a process of subordinating them to human relationships. While many traditional exchange models treat the production of things as inconsequential, the Napo Runa understand production to involve a relationship with natural beings (plants, animals, and spirits of the forest) that they believe share spiritual substance, or <i>samai.</i> Value is the outcome of a complicated poetics of transformation by which things and persons are woven into kinship forms that define daily social and ritual life.</p>