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Deep Roots In Eroding Soil: Building Decolonial Resilience Amidst Climate Violence And Displacement In A Louisiana Bayou Indigenous Community, Lia Mcgrath Kahan

Senior Independent Study Theses

The Pointe-au-Chien Indigenous community of coastal Louisiana is fighting for survival as climate change and socio-political factors threaten to displace them from their ancestral home. This project takes an ethnographic and historical approach to exploring how colonization and climate change have influenced Pointe-au-Chien tribal members’ ability to stay on their ancestral land. Climate projections estimate that the bayou this community has lived alongside of for generations will soon be unrecognizable, leading to potential displacement and devastating cultural loss. Due to the increasing severity of climate change, it is crucial to look to the experiences of frontline Indigenous communities to support …

Desire And The Work It Does: Alterity And Exogamy In A Kotiria Origin Myth From The Northwest Amazon Of Brazil, Janet M. Chernela

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In terms of the pan-Amazonian social paradigm that transforms affines into kin and assimilates them into the consanguineal unit, Eastern Tukanoans must be regarded as exceptional. This paper explores a foundation myth that allows us to better understand relations of self and Other, incest and exogamy, and violence and amity among the Eastern Tukanoan-speaking Kotiria. The narrative provides a heretofore-absent foundation for Tukanoan affinity, revealing complications and nuance in Kotiria notions of alterity and the generative role of Desire in its transformation. It is a synthesis not from nature, but from poesis; not from trust, but from theft; not from …

Environmental Perception In Colombia's Páramo Protected Areas, Juliana Delgado

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the gap between farmers' environmental perceptions in Téquita, a small village in Colombia, and the definition of protected areas has led to a conflict for the use of natural resources. I examine if the protected area's policies have dealt with the social and ecological issues in the páramos and recognized the social construction of the landscape, farmers' identities, and their interpretations about work and land. The case study focuses on Güina High Mountain in the Guantiva-La Rusia páramo complex, which recently the Colombian government declared as a protected area. In light of anthropologist Tim Ingold's meaning of …

Sacred Music In Colonial Era Hispaniola: The Evangelization Of The Taino People, Tito J. Gutierrez

Student Theses

During the 15th-18th centuries, the major European religious orders; the Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and Jeronymites, journeyed to the newly colonized American territories in an attempt to convert the multitudes of natives peoples living there. Along with prayer books, crucifixes, and religious images, these missionaries brought sacred European music to American shores in an attempt to attract the native people to the Catholic faith.The use of music as a tool for conversion of native people in places such as Mexico, South America, California, and the South West United States, have been well researched and documented. However, the research of the spiritual …

Mapping The Suitability Of Cal Poly's Insulated Solar Electric Cookers (Isec) In Ghana, Togo, And Jamaica, Julia G. Kraatz

Social Sciences

The World Health Organization estimates that 3 billion people depend on biomass fuels for cooking, heating, and other day-to-day activities, which causes approximately 4.3 million people annually to die from illnesses attributable to indoor air pollution. The issue is especially pressing for women and children in developing countries, because women care for the home and are consequently responsible for attaining household fuels and cooking. In 2015, ISECs (Insulated Solar Electric Cookers) were developed at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, as a technology that utilizes solar electricity to directly cook food in a well-insulated chamber. They are capable of …

“We Planted Rice And Killed People:” Symbiogenetic Destruction In The Cambodian Genocide, Andrew Woolford, Wanda June, Sereyvothny Um

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In recent years, genocide scholars have given greater attention to the dangers posed by climate change for increasing the prevalence or intensity of genocide. Challenges related to forced migration, resource scarcity, famine, and other threats of the Anthropocene are identified as sources of present and future risk, especially for those committed to genocide prevention. We approach the connection between the natural and social aspects of genocide from a different angle. Our research emanates out of a North American Indigenous studies and new materialist rather than Euro-genocide studies framework, meaning we see the natural and the social (or cultural) as inseparable, …

Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Benefit To Climate-Displaced And Host Communities, Gül Aktürk, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Climate change is borderless, and its impacts are not shared equally by all communities. It causes an imbalance between people by creating a more desirable living environment for some societies while erasing settlements and shelters of some others. Due to floods, sea level rise, destructive storms, drought, and slow-onset factors such as salinization of water and soil, people lose their lands, homes, and natural resources. Catastrophic events force people to move voluntarily or involuntarily. The relocation of communities is a debatable climate adaptation measure which requires utmost care with human rights, ethics, and psychological well-being of individuals upon the issues …

Geospatial Analysis Of Registered Sex Offenders: A Case Study From Pulaski County, Arkansas, Maggie Rose Bridges

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this case study was to analyze the spatial distribution patterns of the residences of registered sex offenders in Pulaski County, Arkansas to determine the impact of state enforced residence restrictions. Density and clustering factors were used to identify census tracts of the study area with high and low concentrations of offenders. These zones were then compared to identify which characteristics were similar and dissimilar between high and low concentration zones. The results indicate that there is a non-random distribution of registered sex offenders in the study area. The findings also indicate that the residence restrictions placed on …

Metaphoric Recursiveness And Ternary Ontology: Another Look At The Language And Worldview Of The Yaminahua, Carlos A. Segovia

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

My purpose in this paper is, first, to explore metaphorical recursiveness in Yaminahua, i.e. the latter’s folding of the common binary structure: {(x) things + (y) words} into the threefold scheme: (A) things + (B) external analogies + (C) internal metaphors, as displaying a multi-iconic semiotic system of the type: A ≈ [B] ≈ C, which is finally reduced to a twofold indexical system: A ← [B], contra Graham Townsley’s dismissal of semiotic theory as being of no relevance in contrast to cognitive construction. And, secondly, to show that within the traditional Yaminahua worldview "animism," "totemism," …

Disrupted Identities And Forced Nomads: A Post-Disaster Legacy Of Neocolonialism In The Island Of Barbuda, Lesser Antilles, Sophia Perdikaris, Rebecca Boger, Edith Gonzalez, Emira Ibrahimpašić, Jennifer D. Adams

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

In the aftermath of the forced evacuation of the island of Barbuda due to Hurricane Irma, the Barbudan people have experienced an exile and return to a ‘new’ geographical, political, and economic context, albeit on the same island. With the specter of climate change and the potential impacts on island communities and nations, we use Barbuda, sister island of Antigua in the Lesser Antilles, to examine the trajectory of nomadic identities as they navigate changes that threaten contemporary land relationships and culture. Since its first permanent settlement in the 17th Century, the island geography of Barbuda has been fundamental to …

Transitioning To Legalization Of Cannabis In Washington State: Regulations’ Impacts On Commodification, Metabolism, & Labor Practices, Rob Loewen

All Master's Theses

This thesis provides an ethnographically grounded analysis of how existing regulations shape the legal recreational cannabis industry in Washington State. I examine the processes involved from seed to sale, including cultivation, processing, quality-control testing, and distribution of recreational cannabis. The goal of this research is to provide a greater understanding of how existing regulations were formed and how they shape social relations within the industry. This study seeks to answer the question: “How are the processes of production within the recreational cannabis industry, along with its labor force and its consumers, impacted by societal perceptions about cannabis, encapsulated within state …

Assessing California Commercial Fishing Community Well-Being In The Context Of Marine Protected Area (Mpa) Formation, Samantha Cook

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Marine protected areas (MPAs)—defined geographic areas where fishing and harvesting activity is limited or restricted—have emerged as a popular marine biodiversity and climate resilience strategy worldwide. MPA monitoring efforts often follow MPA designation to help inform the adaptive management of MPAs and MPA networks. In 2012, California completed the largest statewide system of MPAs to date, consisting of 124 MPAs covering 16% of state waters. Following MPA implementation, the state initiated a long-term monitoring program (2019-2022) to help inform the 10-year MPA management review. This two-chapter thesis presents findings from a state-funded project to conduct long-term socioeconomic monitoring for human …

Visualizing A Post-Apocalypse: Notes On New Ayoreo Cinema, Lucas Bessire, Bernard Belisário

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This essay describes one recent Ayoreo film and its production in order to reflect on the wider significance of lowland South American Indigenous cinema and analyses of it today. Informed by the authors’ roles in the collaborative editing of the film Ujirei, the article details how one Ayoreo filmmaker cinematically visualizes a unique aesthetic response to the aftermath of pandemic upheavals and world-ending violence – a response that pointedly exceeds any prescriptive or structuralist approach to lowland Indigenous cinema. In order to better grasp the subjective, conceptual and political implications of this project, the essay aims to craft an analytic …

When Nature Invades: Resident Perceptions Of The Austerity-Driven "Rewilding" Of An Urban Park In Rock Island, Illinois, Christian S. B. Elliott

Anthropology: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

In an era of rapid urbanization, changing climate, and increasing political division, parks represent increasingly important places for urban residents to interact with and feel connected to the natural environment and receive a number of mental and physical health benefits. Unfortunately, in an age of austerity politics, parks and recreation departments in Midwest Rust Belt cities often lack adequate funding to maintain such public spaces. Recently, the business-minded Rock Island, Illinois Department of Parks and Recreation has implemented a creative cost-saving management solution: “naturalizing” sections of its city parks. This interdisciplinary study uses a mixed methods approach to discover how …

Understanding Global Change: From Documentation And Collaboration To Social Transformation, Karen E. Pennesi

Anthropology Publications

The conclusion to the book situates the chapters within four programs of anthropological research on climate change: (1) documentation of local impacts of and adaptations to climate change, (2) connections to socioeconomic and political contexts, (3) collaborations with nonanthropologists, and (4) activism and social transformation. The final section notes the persistent challenges to creating positive change and meaningful research outcomes. It highlights some examples of success and outlines future directions for politically engaged anthropological work around climate change.

Grandes Interrogações Sobre O Futuro Dos Povos Indígenas Isolados, Conselho Indigenista Missionário

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

O presente artigo, de autoria coletiva da equipe do Conselho Indigenista Missionário (Cimi), pretende traçar um quadro geral da situação de vulnerabilidade dos povos indígenas em isolamento e contato inicial no Brasil, tendo como referência temporal o ano de 2016. É preocupante o avanço da exploração dos recursos naturais em territórios ocupados por esses povos, principalmente com a mineração e a exploração de madeira, seja dentro de terras indígenas destinadas aos povos em isolamento, em terras indígenas partilhadas por outros povos, ou em territórios onde a proteção ou o reconhecimento pelo Estado não se faz presente.

This article, written collectively …

Territorialidad De Los Grupos Familiares De Pueblos Indígenas En Aislamiento (Pia) En La Región Del Yasuní, Amazonía Ecuatoriana, Roberto Esteban Narváez Collaguazo

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

El artículo presenta información etnográfica y una interpretación etnológica sobre los Tagaeiri y Taromenane como parte de los grupos familiares en aislamiento que habitan en el Yasuní, su forma de vida tradicional y su territorio, en un contexto de actores externos que inciden en la generación de violencia y de amenaza a su supervivencia. Sobre los pueblos en aislamiento en Ecuador existe información referenciada en datos indirectos que han dado indicios de presencia a partir de registros de rastros e imágenes satelitales y algunos datos directos, como avistamientos, encuentros en la selva, fotografías aéreas y, el principal, encuentros que generaron …

Thinking Through Tubes: Flowing H/Air And Synaesthesia, Stephen P. Hugh-Jones

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

The tube, as both object and concept, has cropped up from time to time in the ethnography of lowland South America, most notably in Rivière and Lévi-Strauss’s discussions of blowpipes, hair tubes and pottery and in Hill and Wright's writings on Yuruparí flutes and trumpets. Using data from Northwest Amazonia, this paper first seeks to provide a more rigorous definition of the tube as a concept, exploring its various manifestations and relating these to the body as an image of totalization and detotalization. With reference to myths about creation and Yuruparí, the paper then argues that flows from tubes provide …

Good Reasons Or Bad Conscience? Or Why Some Indian Peoples Of Amazonia Are Ambivalent About Eating Meat, Stephen P. Hugh-Jones

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Originally written for a conference on meat attended by farmers, anthropologists, people involved in cultural affairs, and other members of the public, and seeking to avoid emphasis on cultural difference, this paper explores common ground between Euro-American and Amerindian ambivalence about meat consumption. Meat-eating raises two shared concerns: an intuitive recognition of the resemblances between humans and animals and an uncomfortable awareness that human life often depends on the death and destruction of other living beings. I suggest that, behind some obvious cultural differences, Amazonian shamanic and ritual procedures aimed at the de-subjectification of meat share points in common with …

The "Uncontacted" As Third Infamy, George Mentore

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This paper principally addresses the "problem" of anthropological thinking, that is, on how and why it remains with us and not with the peoples who do not subscribe to our contested regimes of truth. From my research on the topic, it appears we have not achieved any substantial moral progress on the question of exposure to indigenous otherness since the first European "contact." This failure is primarily due to our hardheaded rationalist refusal to accept our inability to access the felt reality of the Other directly. Or, better still, of the failure of our language to obtain the shared reality …

Christianity + Schooling On Nature Versus Culture In Amazonia, Aparecida M. N. Vilaça

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Based on the analysis of Evangelical Biblical translations, as well as on the school writing of Wari' (Southwestern Amazonia) students, produced in indigenous secondary school classrooms and at the intercultural university, this article aims to show how, in both church and school, a nature separate from humans is invented with which they should relate in a utilitarian and also contemplative way. Simultaneously nature’s opposite is invented–a culture that excludes animals and subjects them.

Rexistência Nas Fronteiras Do Capitalismo/Colonialismo: A Ecologia Política Do Isolamento E Da Soberania, Felipe Milanez

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Ofereço a perspectiva da ecologia política para rever e atualizar a política de “isolamento” e “não-contato” com base nos conceitos de soberania e necropolítica, sugerindo uma nova proposta de prática política para situações de conflitos em territórios ocupados por povos indígenas que resistem à conquista pela guerra e distanciamento. Da perspectiva do estudo dos conflitos ambientais, a ecologia política questiona a noção de isolamento ao inseri-la como parte do sistema mundo capitalista/colonial. Diante do quadro crescente de fascistização social e violência do Estado, cuja pressão sobre os territórios tornou-se ainda mais intenso, é a morte e a vida destes coletivos …

Tubes And Androgyny: Comment On "Thinking Through Tubes", Françoise Barbira Freedman

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In this comment on Stephen Hugh-Jones’s "Thinking Through Tubes" Françoise Barbira Freedman offers a feminist meditation on the semiotics of androgyny in Northwest Amazonian shamanism, ritual life and mythology. By focusing on processes of detotalization and retotalization that move beings from an androgynous state to a single-sex identity and back again, Barbira Freedman reveals a dynamic "one sex, two genders model of androgyny" that could not be further from a concept of androgyny as blurred gender. These movements in and out of a one sex state are largely the preserve of men so that androgynous features of the cosmos are …

A Story Of Two Videos Plus Coda: Perspectives On "Contact" In Western Amazonia, Giancarlo Rolando

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In 2014, the Xinane people of Brazilian Amazonia made international news after two videos showing scenes of their “first contact” were uploaded to the internet. This paper explores the ways in which different audiences reacted to news about this “first contact.” Local Peruvian and Brazilian settlers, the international public, and the Mastanawa, a people culturally proximate to the Xinane, had different readings of this event and expressed opposing views concerning what actions should have been taken following the events depicted in the videos. These differences in opinion are telling of the different ways in which each group thinks of “isolated …

Resoluciones Del Debate Especial Sobre Los Derechos Y La Protección De Los Pueblos Indígenas En Aislamiento, Participantes En El Panel De Debate Especial

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This contribution represents the consensus arrived at in a dialog between researchers, academics, activists, public officials, and indigenous representatives on the topic of voluntarily isolated peoples that took place over several days at the SALSA meeting in Lima in July 2017. The group’s consensus conclusions with respect to recommended state policy and civil society actions are presented.

Una Víctima Del Encuentro Emergente Entre Mundos, Minna Opas, Yulissa Trigoso Zorrilla

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

En febrero de 2018, Víctor Zorrilla, un hombre Yine de mayor edad que vive en el sudeste de Perú, fue asesinado por los mashco piro mientras estaba cazando. Zorrilla se había encontrado con los mashco piro, los que consideraba como parientes, nomolene, varias veces durante décadas, pero eso no le impidió llegar a ser víctima de un emergente encuentro entre mundos. A través de un relato personal de sus encuentros con los mashco piro en la década de 1980, este artículo plantea y examina varias cuestiones focales relacionadas con el aislamiento voluntario. ¿Cómo se puede adquirir conocimiento sobre los …

Molas: Dress, Identity, Culture By Diana Marks, University Of New Mexico Press, 2016. 288 Pp., Notes, References, Index., Mònica Martínez Mauri

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

No abstract provided.

Singularity On The Margins: Autobiographical Writings Among The Shuar Of Ecuadorian Amazonia, Grégory Deshoulliere, Natalia Buitron

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Inspired by Stephen Hugh-Jones’s suggestion of a fit between Tukanoan writing genres and their sociocultural systems, in this article we explore Shuar autobiographical writings in light of Chicham (Jivaroan) individualism. By exploring first-person—nonpatrimonial—texts that have received much less attention in the regional literature, the article contributes to theorizing a different way of transmitting tradition:one focused on individual praxis rather than on collective patrimony. Through the analysis of three autobiographical texts, we show how their authors appropriate writing to construct singularity, or distinct “paths of individuation”: the personal story of resistance of a school teacher, the exemplary life course of a …

La Política Pública De No Contacto De Los Pueblos Indígenas En Aislamiento Y Contacto Inicial, Carlos Antonio Martin Soria Dall'orso

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Esta articulo revisa la evolución de la legislación amazónica para la protección de los Pueblos Indígenas en Aislamiento y Contacto Inicial (en adelante PIACI) a través de una mirada al derecho comparado amazónico. Luego se propone cual es la situación territorial de los PIACI en varios países amazónicos, para entender que estos pueblos habitan paisajes complejos de derechos otorgados a ellos pero, a veces también al Estado y a terceros. A continuación se reflexiona sobre la propuesta de reconocer Corredores de Protección PIACI como una propuesta que permite integrar varias áreas de protección PIACI que son colindantes para así a …

A Brief Comment On Hugh-Jones's "The Origin Of Night And The Dance Of Time", Geraldo Andrello

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In this comment on Hugh-Jones’s article "The Origin of Night," Geraldo Andrello argues that the politics of myth narrations and ritual performances are enacted through the regulation of temporality and explains why it is that all-important status distinctions are brought into existence through the retelling of permutations of the Origin of Night myth.