Territorialidades indígenas e conexões vegetais: entre cidades e aldeias no Médio Solimões

Abstract

This thesis aims to explore the relationships between territorialities, places, plants, and Indigenous narratives in the Middle Solimões region. The research begins with a reflection on the connections between plants, ethnography, and the challenges of contemporary anthropology, situating Amazonia as a space of complex relations among people, territories, and non-human beings. Central to the discussion is how places function as relational markers in the construction of Tikuna territories in the Middle Solimões, laying the groundwork for understanding the centrality of plants in Indigenous social life and in the territorial movements of these collectives. The text narrates crossings along the Solimões River, the challenges of conducting ethnography in this region, and key aspects of fieldwork in Coari, highlighting the village of Bom Jesus do Igapó Grande and the role of cacique leadership. It brings together experiences of lived and interrupted ethnographies, reflections on anthropological practice in the context of the pandemic, the significant Tikuna presence in Tefé, and an analysis of plants as agents in the making of persons, particularly jenipapo, tobacco, and fermented beverages. The focus then shifts to Indigenous collectives in riverside cities along the Solimões, investigating how places and plants intertwine in urban contexts. The text further deepens the relationship between plants and places in the Middle Solimões, showing how Indigenous knowledge recognizes plants as mediators of spaces and relations. The analysis highlights the Tikuna worldview, in which plants are fundamental to the constitution of territory, concluding that they act as bioindicators of the body–territory, as expressions of Indigenous resistance and the continuity of life.