Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

University of Helsinki | HY · Indigenous Studies

I address the deep history of Amazonian urbanity through the lens of recent archaeological findings on precolonial human concentrations, coupled with my ethnographic material and oral histories of how urbanity is represented in my interlocutors’ contemporary imaginaries. I begin by examining precolonial urbanity with the aid of the archaeological e...

We examine the Indigenous uses, oral histories, and knowledge of native Guadua bamboo species in southwestern Amazonia. Two Guadua species form dense stands in which individual plants die en masse at regular intervals of about 28 years. Scholars suggested that pre-colonial earth builders took advantage of these die-off events as a natural aid in re...

The relationship between Indigenous learning systems and sustainability pedagogies has not been sufficiently elaborated despite the recognition of Indigenous peoples as stewards of the world's biological, cultural and linguistic diversity. Indigenous pedagogies are intergenerational, relational, and land‐based. This special section addresses interg...

This article discusses relational land‐based education in the Brazilian Amazon and the idea of intra‐dependency. The data produced with the Apurinã presents the intra‐relational spaces of knowing created between different beings, human and other‐than‐human, which contrast with the notion of individual learners. Apurinã co‐existence in learning also...

National parks and other preserved spaces of nature have become iconic symbols of nature protection around the world. However, the worldviews of Indigenous peoples have been marginalized in discourses of nature preservation and conservation. As a result, for generations of Indigenous peoples, these protected spaces of nature have meant dispossessio...

Linguistic Anthropology, Sociolinguistics, Indigenous Languages, Environmental Humanities, Environmental Anthropology

Communication, an apparently intangible practice, does in fact affect the way people engage with their social worlds in very material ways. Inspired by both ethnographic and archival-driven research, this special issue aims to fill the gap in studies of language materiality by addressing entanglements with other-than-human agencies. The contributio...

This is an open access book and available for free downloading at: https://brill.com/view/title/56605

This article looks at what origin stories teach about the world and what kind of material presence they have in Southwestern Amazonia. We examine the ways the Apurinã relate to certain nonhuman entities through their origin story, and our theoretical approach is language materiality, as we are interested in material means of mediating traditional s...

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) refers to a body of knowledge , practices, and ideas transmitted and (re)generated orally and non-verbally in diverse forms from generation to generation. It is constantly changing and being updated. TEK is rich among several communities, but we will situate our cases in the Amazonian and Arctic Indigenous con...

Evidence from several earthwork-building societies has recently been discovered in Amazonia that challenges existing theories about precolonial, human-environment interactions. Combining data obtained by plant macrofossil analyses, archaeological excavations, historical sources, and indigenous oral histories, we focus on the pre-colonial sources of...

Throughout the Amazon, notions of ownership and mastership shape the use of natural resources among many Indigenous communities. These ideas are reflected in the figure of game masters (i.e. spiritual beings who own the animals), which are widespread among Indigenous peoples across the Amazon Basin. In this paper, we explore the diverse biocultural...

This article identifies core dimensions in the notion of “sustainability” as it is conceptualized among Indigenous peoples. These are context-based relationality, community-based governance, education, language, quality of life and health, and communal recognition of certain nonhumans as life-givers. Taking into account different Indigenous cultura...

This article looks at negotiations with state authorities and the evidentiary criteria they create in culturally contrasting contexts when phenomena deal with elements that for the dominant society are conceptualized as “supernatural.” We draw from the level of experiences of other‐than‐human beings, especially spirits and “ungraspable” presences,...

This introductory article examines key issues related to Indigenous conceptualisations of cultural heritage, especially intergenerational aspects, Indigenous concepts of time, Indigenous knowledge, heritage language, and relationships with the environment. It urges to reflect on how these aspects are integrated when legal mechanisms protecting and...

This article discusses how for the Apurinã community in Brazil, the relationships with certain places and nonhuman entities actually co-produce biocultural heritage. This involves not only storytelling, care, and respect, but also avoidance, and thus shows specific intergenerational ways of managing and relating to the land. Here I will especially...

This chapters looks at Amazonian school histories, from the perspective of the Apurinã who live in Brazilian Amazonia. It addresses first traditional Apurinã education, and then focuses on the historical and structural changes of schooling, studied in their national and political contexts, as well as the recent alterations and challenges in sustain...

This introductory article examines key issues related to Indigenous conceptualisations of cultural heritage, especially intergenerational aspects, Indigenous concepts of time, Indigenous knowledge, heritage language, and relationships with the environment. It urges to reflect on how these aspects are integrated when legal mechanisms protecting and...

Drawing from local records of material vestiges of the past, understood here in the broad sense of objects and traces of different presences including those of nonhumans, this paper addresses how indigenous and riverside populations in Brazil and Argentina communicate their relations with the territory to the cultural heritage authorities. The vest...

‘Landscape’ and ‘ritual’ have been largely discussed in the social and human sciences, although their inter-relatedness has gained little scholarly attention. Drawing on earlier studies of ritual and landscape, as well as the authors′ own ethnographic works, ‘ritual landscape’ is suggested here as a useful analytical tool with which to understand h...

This article discusses how the use of social media fosters, motivates, and regulates social relations among the Arawakan-and Panoan-speaking indigenous groups in the state of Acre and the southern part of the state of Amazonas, Brazil, where even the smallest towns have recently received high-speed internet connections. The research this article is...

How do Amazonian native young people perceive, question, and negotiate the new kinds of social and cultural situations in which they find themselves? Virtanen looks at how current power relations constituted by ethnic recognition, new social contacts, and cooperation with different institutions have shaped the current native youth in Amazonia.

The best means of integrating socio-cultural dimensions into the study and politics of sustainable development are through the ethnographic analysis of cultural models and patterns of behaviour. This is particularly mandatory in those contexts where the perception of reality is radically different from the Western point of view. We illustrate how t...

Our analysis of the interaction between forest and urban areas—the latter linked to commodities, education, health care, negotiations, development projects, cultural presentations, and employment—has already provided a background understanding of how indigenous communities need to organize themselves differently in political and social terms. Young...

Shamanic practices provide a vital source of knowledge for a young adult’s personal maturity. In this chapter the ethnographic examples are taken from ayahuasca shamanism. The primary subjective experiences related to shamanism occur in youth, and shamanic practices contribute to construcing personhood and agency. In the second section, after explo...

In the previous chapter, we saw that the relations among community members, nonhuman agencies, and the non-Manchineri shape a web of connections in which young Manchineri people strive to form their subjectivity. This chapter focuses on contemporary ritualistic transitions that prepare indigenous youths to strengthen their position, body, and knowl...

After exploring Manchineri sociocosmology, the passages to adulthood, shamanism, mobility between urban and rural areas, young people as spokespersons, and the current views of relationality in the previous chapters, it has become clear that a highly diverse range of human and nonhuman actors are viewed as a source of transformative power. Young pe...

In the previous chapters we have examined how people in urban areas are considered to differ from those living in the forest environment and villages and the rituals practiced beyond rural-urban divides. But what do “city” and “urban” actually signify for Amazonian Indians? Urban areas have become increasingly important in terms of pursuing economi...

In Amazonian social philosophies, proximity and relatedness have typically been created by common social acts that are conceived to produce similar bodies (McCallum 1996; Conklin and Morgan 1996; Vilaça 2002, 2005). This chapter looks at how relatedness is currently built between Manchineri villages, generations, urban and forest dwellers, and gend...

The indigenous presence in urban areas of Amazonia has become more visible as Indian populations have negotiated their own spaces and acted in new contexts previously reserved for the dominant society. This article looks at ways in which today's young Indians in an urban area define and interpret their new cultural and social situations, drawing fr...

RESUMEN Este artículo ofrece un nuevo punto de vista sobre los nuevos tipos de intermediarios aparecidos en las comunidades indígenas amazónicas, mostrando cómo las nuevas relaciones interétnicas han cambiado la realidad de estas comunidades. El texto presenta un estudio sobre los Manchineris de la Amazonía brasileña. Estos agentes llevan a cabo la...

The article focuses on the Amazonian young natives’ conceptions of cultural traditions. It looks at the way young Manchineri, Apurinã and Cashinahua living in the Acre state, Brazil, ‘operate’ with what they call their cultural traditions and what is its role in their everyday lives. The data used for the analysis consists principally of interview...

For Amazonian indigenous youths, global youth cultures offer a space for new conduct, manners and the crossing of cultural and social borders. In particular, in Amazonia participation in youth cultures appears to be related to the educational sphere, including school, studying, and being a student. This article discusses the meaning of global youth...