Indigenous communities of Amazonia are facing the devastating effects of covid-19, but you can help.
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Aiding communities of Ecuadorian Amazonia during the covid-19 emergency
Project team leader, Pedro Romero, in Ecuador partnered with organizations to capture data on the spread of covid-19 in Amazonia.
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Indigenous Shipibo perspectives of covid-19
A virtual seminar with Shipibo guests The Amazon Anthropology Group began a virtual event series on the covid-19 emergency and indigenous peoples of the Amazon regions. During the launch of the first seminar, co-organized by Geography of Philosophy Project postdoctoral fellow Emanuele Fabiano, more than 180 people attended the event via Zoom as Shipibo guests from Pucallpa and Lima discussed looking at the emergency from the indigenous perspective. “The virus arrived, but indifference, forgetfulness and neglect of our land was already waiting for it,” said Jeiser Suarez Maynas with concern, a Shipibo journalist and health expert who, together with his association ARIAP (Asociación Raíces Indígenas Amazónicas Peruanas), is on the front…
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Routes to Knowledge in the Upper Amazon
In this post, I would like to build on what Jordan Kiper and Emanuele Fabiano have written about indigenous epistemologies in the Upper Amazon. As Kiper notes in “An Anthropological Perspective”, in the shamanic traditions found throughout Upper Amazon regions of Ecuador and Peru, particularly among Quechua-speaking peoples such as the Inga (Southern Pastaza Quechua), Llakwash Runa (San Martín Quechua), and Canelos Quichua (Northern Pastaza Quechua), yachay (‘knowledge phlegm’) is a material manifestation of both knowledge and power, transmitted from master to apprentice shamans. [1] Concepts such as yachay represent a radical departure from occidental notions of knowledge and are crucial for understanding indigenous epistemologies, shamanic networks, and power throughout the Amazon…
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Introduction to Joshua Homan: the ethnology of western Amazonia
Written by Joshua Homan I am a social anthropologist focused on the ethnology of western Amazonia. My research interests include indigeneity, extractive and illicit economies, political anthropology, shamanism, ethnobotany, kinship, and social organization. Since 2005, I have had the opportunity to conduct extensive ethnographic research in the Peruvian Amazon with both indigenous and mestizo peoples in urban, peri-urban, and rural areas. I have primarily concentrated my studies in the western reaches of the Upper Amazon where we find some of the most biodiverse and culturally diverse landscapes on the planet. Through intense ethnographic research in this region, particularly where the lowlands meet the Andean piedmont, I have focused on understanding…
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Pedro Romero – Ecuadorian team leader
Pedro Romero: Líder Equipo Ecuatoriano By Pedro Romero As a trained economist, my initial research topics included financial crisis, fiscal policy, monetary regimes, exchange rate mechanisms, and development. I was working towards my undergraduate degree in economics in Ecuador twenty years ago. At the same time, the country was experiencing one of its worst economic crises that led to the abandonment of its domestic currency for the U.S. dollar. It was, also, a period in which constitutional reforms were proposed. Everything seemed so unstable. Back then, I was lucky enough to participate in an extra-curricular reading group of economics majors on political philosophy. It was then, that I found readings…
