Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at Amazonian Indigenous experiences of biodiversity from the perspective of deep time, demonstrating that the deep history of human-environment interactions orientate people's lives, as well as the specific intergenerational entanglements of plants, animals and people.

Paper long abstract:

Taking the perspective of deep time and deep history, this paper discusses Amazonian Indigenous experiences of biodiversity. Despite significant scholarship on human ecology, different notions of biodiversity among those who have produced biocultural landscapes for generations have been little addressed in a long-term scale. This paper draws from ethnography, co-living, and conversational interviews with the Apurinã in the Central Purus River, Amazonas State, Brazilian Amazonia. Additionally, I have worked with archaeologists and biologists, which has contributed insights into their different temporal analyses of biodiversity in the region to the study. The paper shows how, for the Apurinã, the deep history of human-environment interactions and memory orientate people's lives, shaping local experiences of diversity embedded in the biocultural landscape. These temporal aspects are also linked to specific intergenerational entanglements of plants, animals, and people, in which respect, reciprocity, and responsibility are crucial values.

Today, there are drastic ruptures in Indigenous social worlds due to large-scale extractive and infrastructure projects. By providing evidence of the nature of ancestral relations with diverse entities, new archaeological and biological data have become crucial tools in shedding light on how Indigenous agency has contributed to Amazonian forests in the long-term. However, different actors' understandings of deep time may differ. Although scientists usually consider time to be linear while local actors perceive it as spiral, different understandings of deep time offer important evidence of changes and views vital for the co-creation of new knowledge.