Tangled stories, underground archives: multispecies relationships in the landscapes of the lower Madeira River

Abstract

In this article I draw attention to the trails and paths that connect and permeate the Mura and Pirahã territory and highlight aspects - obliterated in specialized literature - of multispecific relationalities imprinted in the landscapes, which the Mura activate more recently in their struggles, one of which is the resumption of the Mura language. I begin by focusing on the gap that separated the Mura from the Pirahã, an abyss built by indigenous policies, a divide based on the apprehension that different contact experiences of these groups were enough to separate them. The classifications of indigenism, based on linguistic and cultural differentiation and the process of ethnicification, are reviewed, for which I return to the critique of the notion of acculturation constructed by Peter Gow. Attention to multispecific regimes of relationships with plants, animals and attention to the presence of the dead who participate in the construction of the forest suggests that we think of such indigenous collectives as sets, since they refer to experiences of ancient and current relationalities, and understand themselves as constituting a network of exchanges that leaves traces in the landscapes.