Paper short abstract:

Examining the persistence of the “orphan” concept in Andoque history, this paper explores how the Andoque’s engagement in slavery shaped their contemporary perceptions of graded agency across genders, kinship classes, and species, eventually reflecting in current extractive activities.

Paper long abstract:

Until the late nineteenth century, the Andoque, an Indigenous people from Northwest Amazonia, Colombia, engaged in slave trading, exchanging “orphans” for metal tools with non-Indigenous merchants. Contemporary hunters maintain this paradigm, negotiating with the nonhuman guardians of game for their “orphans.” Considering the persistence of the “orphan” concept, this paper addresses the question: How has the Andoque’s engagement in the slave trade shaped their contemporary perceptions of agency across genders, kinship categories, and species? Scholars have delved into Amazonians’ involvement in slavery, revealing hierarchical and dominative structures in an otherwise presumed egalitarian region (Jabin 2016; Lucas 2019; Santos Granero 2009), yet the influence of this history on current perceptions of graded agency/personhood remains underexplored, including the ontological grading itself, especially when compared to animist regions like Southeast Asia (Århem and Sprenger 2015). Drawing on oral history, myth, and rituals recorded during a 14-month ethnographic fieldwork, I demonstrate how, in a patrilineal society viewing both non-kin and nonhumans as potential affines, captains’ past ability to designate affinal and non-agnatic kin as exchangeable “orphans” has led to a conflation of agnatic identity, masculinity, and heightened agency. Challenging traditional views of slavery as depending on the dehumanization of individuals (Kopytoff 1982), I argue that the “orphan” status was transposed from humans to nonhumans, increasing the latter’s objectification—a crucial step for the Andoque’s integration into the regional post-slavery extractive economy. My analysis sheds light on the distributed nature of agency by emphasizing how kinship and gender categories mediate its manipulation across economic arrangements.