This project seeks to understand the Amazonian relation to nature by recording Amazonian Kichwa, Achuar and Wao Tededo language narratives about the land and its species. The links below lead to short videos of testimonies, stories, and songs about nature. Our method is to interview knowledgeable individuals in the forest setting where their memories are activated by the plants and animals they see. The videos are edited from these longer interviews to exemplify key aspects of Kichwa thinking about nature. Although the subtitle are set to English they can be changed to Spanish or Kichwa by clicking the settings icon. Because our approach is anthropological linguistics much of our recent focuses on the Kichwa language itself as the vehicle through which the relations to nature is shaped and expressed.
Kichwa Language Narrators
Wao Tededo Narrators
Achuar Narrators
Watering the Earth with Tears: The Social Relation to Nature
Contents
Introduction
Origin stories: plants and animals as relatives who went away
Birds
Human Beauty and the Beauty of the Land
Connecting lines: painting the land on the body
Ceramic art: The visualizing of patterned nature
Perfumed Wind: the local smell of a healthy body
Breath, Wind, and Wind sickness
Language and Forest Relations
Singing with the voice of birds
Speaking to plants and animals
Language as social relation
Evoking the language of the land Ideophones
Perspective
Humor and the evoking of animal/human similarity
Food plants and wild relatives
Drinking bitter barks
Trees Awake at Night
Search by Species
Birds
Thunder
Ecological destruction and the Resistance of Forests