Amazonian Storytelling as Co-Learning Within the Land of More-Than-Human Beings and Environmental History from Indigenous Perspectives

Oral histories draw on distinct traditions to narrate more-than-human worlds. In this article, we address their role in materializing the more-than-human perspectives and presences in the Amazon by focusing on the specific Apurinã narrative of Awãi, a story of one Apurinã ancestor. The analysis of Awãi’s story underscores the intimate presence and subjectivity of diverse more-than-human beings and their epistemological dimensions in oral histories. In Southwestern Amazonia, Apurinã stories are multisensory tools that have great power to communicate more-than-human social worlds and interconnectedness of beings. The story’s human and more-than-human characters are not from the past; rather, they are active subjects of the Apurinã social world and landscape. In the Amazon, the stories and storytelling moments play an important role in teaching both environmental history and environmental present shared with other sentient beings, as well as how to live and relate with them.