Voices of Indigenous Amazonia: historical processes of sociobiodiversity in the face of the challenges of the Anthropocene

• Grant number: 25/01239-4
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: March 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Archeology
• Principal Investigator: Jennifer Watling
• Grantee: Jennifer Watling
• Host Institution: Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia (MAE). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Antonio Domingos Brescovit ; Estevão da Silva ; Larissa Ye'padiho Mota Duarte ; Paulo Eduardo de Oliveira ; Ricardo Pinto da Rocha

Abstract

The project proposes to study Amazonian biodiversity and its interactions with native peoples, in the long term, within three regions characterized by complex sociocultural systems: the Xingu Indigenous Territory (TIX, Matto Grosso state); the Upper Negro Indigenous Territory (TI ARN, Amazonas state); and the Kayapó Indigenous Territory (TIKayapó, Pará state). These territories stand out for their complex and varied ethnic,UKRI - 3 historical, and socio-environmental configurations, with specific ethnobiological knowledge in each region. Here we combine research in the human and biological sciences with Indigenous knowledge in order to increase the efficiency of our knowledge production about Amazonia. We propose to document biodiversity and its relationship with the knowledge and sociocultural practices of Indigenous peoples of the present and the past, through: 1) biological inventories of species little known to Western science; 2) characterization of sampled landscapes with participatory mapping and remote sensing; 3) sharing knowledge about biodiversity between science and Indigenous knowledge; 4)recording anthropogenic changes in vegetation, fauna, and soils over the long term; and 5)collaborative production of ethnographic, linguistic, and sociocultural documentation. The approach will enable a large-scale analysis of biological and sociocultural diversity,mitigating taxonomic gaps in well-preserved but poorly sampled regions of Brazilian Legal Amazonia, through multifaceted studies (descriptions of new species, taxonomic revisions, morphological and molecular phylogenetic analyses, distribution modelling and species richness) integrated with traditional Indigenous knowledge, including here consideration of its role in the domestication of plants and landscapes and the millennia-old development of effective environmental management technologies. The proposal will provide elements to face the socio-environmental challenges of the Anthropocene, meeting a current emergency: socio-environmental crisis and climate change that compromises forests, resources, and the continuity of the ways of life of the native peoples, who are the partners of our research. (AU)