Paper short abstract:

Using visual media, I examine how Amerindian children are developing new forms of desire and worldviews compared to their elders, and in so doing are preparing the ground for a different future. This will highlight the relevance of child-centred works for policy and development.

Paper long abstract:

Children and youth typically constitute the largest demographics of indigenous populations in Amazonia and across the world, and yet child-centred works on young Amerindians remain limited. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with Matses people of Amazonian Peru, this paper examines how Amerindian children and young people actively contribute to ongoing processes of socioeconomic transformation in the region, and how their ways of acting and being are opening up, or closing off, certain possibilities for the future of society. By using child-centred visual methods, including drawing and participatory photography, I explore how young Amerindians are developing a desire—or literally 'bunquioe', a hunger for—the non-indigenous world of cities, concrete, electric light, television, manufactured goods, and so forth. This will demonstrate that far from simply reproducing the works of their elders, children are actively shaping the environments wherein they dwell and setting up the ground for new forms of life. As such, an attention to indigenous childhood within contemporary societies is not only essential to anthropological analysis but has clear implications for policy and development.