Abstract

MOURIES, Thomas. With or Without Ancestors?: applicability of the Term ‘Ancestral’ in the Peruvian Amazon. Anthropologica [online]. 2014, vol.32, n.32, pp.17-40. ISSN 0254-9212.

The existence -or not- of the concept of ancestors in the indigenous Amazon has been the subject of much debate. However, regional leaders do not hesitate to call upon ‘ancestral’ knowledge, customs, or territories in the sense that, from an academic point of view, could appear enigmatic. «Ancestral, but… with or without ancestors?» is the question a confused anthropologist might ask. In this article, I propose to offer elements of a response to this question, based on a case study in Peru. First I analyze how Amazonian indigenous leaders, following international law, have adopted the legal notion of ‘ancestral possession’ of their territory to adapt it to the political sphere. This approach accounts for the recent generalization and uniformization of the term ‘ancestral’, but poses the problem of how it articulates with the indigenous cosmologies that it supposes to reflect. For this reason, I explore in the second section the pertinence of the category of ‘ancestor’ in the indigenous Amazon, briefly drawing upon the academic debate in order to define in what way this category takes on meaning. Based on testimony from an experienced Awajún leader, we thus return in the third section more explicitly to the different meanings and planes of reference that unfold when one uses the term ‘ancestral’, showing how Amazonian indigenous people not only adopt external conceptual elements and arguments, but also transform them based on their own cosmological singularities and political perspectives.

Keywords : Amazon rainforest; ancestors; ancestrality; awajún; ayahuasca; ILO Convention 169; Inter-American Court of Human Rights; indigenous cosmologies; international law; indigenous rights; political discourse; UNDRIP; ancestral spirits; state; Amazonian indigenous; jurisprudence; indigenous leadership; political ontology; UN; Peru; indigenous politics; indigenous territory; ancestral territory.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )