Life in three scenarios: Plant controversies between Jamamadi gardens and Hi-Merimã patauá palm orchards (Middle Purus River, Amazonas, Brazil)

Abstract

Inhabiting the middle Purus river basin, a branch of the Amazon river, Arawá-speaking groups have maintained permanent contact with non-indigenous society only in the last century. Here we provide an account of two Arawá subgroups, the Jamamadi and Hi-Merimã, in order to untangle apparent contradictions between their ways of living, respectively based on the predominance of cultivated plants in gardens and of forest plants. This approach is inspired by three / tree scenarios: the Hi-Merimã’s isolation from indigenous and non-indigenous people undertaken in the 1960′s, the report of a “false contact” that they would have began in 2016 and the Jamamadi’s recent and perhaps temporary decision to move into the forest after knowledge of the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides the apparent distance between gardener and gatherer ways of life, we highlight the proximity and fluidity that both share in terms of entanglements with plants, focusing on forms of sociality between groups, gardens and forests. Inspired by recent discussions regarding archaeological perspectives on plant use, ethnographic formulations of other-than-human relations, and historical ecology, we propose that both are cultural and not necessarily static choices. One is contained within and announces the other, and both are entangled in an oscillating movement of fusion and fission.