O cheiro doentio do contato: doença, história e degradação ambiental entre os Karitiana na Amazônia ocidental

Abstract

Starting from a singular interpretation that the Karitiana, a Tupi-Arikem group in Rondônia, proposed for an event they have watched on television, this article intends to reflect on the relations between disease, history and the environment in a context of inter-ethnic relations and serious and complex problems this contact created in indigenous societies in South-America lowlands. The text suggests that the Karitiana are aware of the various events around the globe, and that they reflect on them based on their cosmological parameters. Thus, they produce comments of global reach that can be taken as forms of knowledge and environmental criticism including, for example, the relations with history, cosmos and its inhabitants, both humans and non-humans.