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Wetland spirits and indigenous knowledge: implications for the conservation of wetlands in the Peruvian Amazon
(Elsevier, 2021-01-01)
Globally, the importance of indigenous and local knowledge systems for science, policy, environmental conservation and the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples is increasingly being recognised. The Amazon region in particular is home to many indigenous peoples who have conserved their cultural traditions and knowledge, despite growing threats to the environment and traditional lifestyles and cultures. Based on insights from ethnographic research in three indigenous communities, here we present a case study on the indigenous knowledge of the Urarina people of the Chambira Basin in the Peruvian Amazon and its implications for conservation. We describe, for the first time, a series of anthropomorphic and territorial “wetland spirits”, who are associated with particular wetland ecosystems and range in character from the benign to outright aggressive. Their presence may indirectly benefit conservation of wetlands, as humans fear or respect these wetland spirits and adapt their behaviour accordingly. While benign spirits may be seen as positive models to follow, aggressive spirits may deter unsustainable harvesting of resources through fear of disease or death. However, their cultural status is not adequately captured by such rational-scientific explanations. Wetland spirits are important characters within the indigenous cosmos of humans and non-humans, which is built on a relational, rather than extractive model of connecting humans and nature. We discuss our findings in the context of wider conceptual debates on recognising relational ontologies in environmental policy and conservation, the paradigm of biocultural conservation, as well as their implications for land titling, and incorporating indigenous perspectives in local education.
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Navigating Shifting Waters: Subjectivity, Oil Extraction, and Urarina Territorial Strategies in the Peruvian Amazon
(Elsevier Ltd, 2023-11-01)
This paper examines the relationships between extractive infrastructure, changing territorial strategies, and contemporary processes of subject formation among the Urarina, an indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon. We first introduce the uneven and combined character of oil extraction in the Loreto region in north-eastern Peru, and how its racialised spatial contradictions are expressed in the ethnopolitical field that gives political form to regional extractive operations. The paper goes on to analyse the case of the Urarina people in the Chambira river basin, their particular place in the geography of extraction, and the case of the community of Nueva Union. We examine contemporary processes of subject formation in the community, which combine radical transformations in the role of money, territorial strategies, use and valuation of the environment, and changes in political structure, in non-linear ways. The paper closes by examining how the case of the community of Nueva Union sheds light on broader dynamics of subject formation, localised relations to the environment, and extraction as they play out in contemporary indigenous Amazonia.

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