This article uses ethnographic and ethnobotanical methods to examine relationships between animate and agentive plants and human beings among the Makushi, Pemon, Karinya, and other Indigenous and mixed-Indigenous peoples in the Guianas. It considers representations of these plants and related ontologies in the archival record and contrasts these accounts with more recent ethnographic...
This paper discusses the theory of "perspectivism” (Viveiros de Castro) and its application to interpretation of the myths of the Pemón-speaking groups of the Gran Sabana (Arekuna, Kamarakoto, Taurepán); the paper aims to compare ontological conceptions of "seeing” and "hearing”. Performances of the shamanic healing ritual, the hunting ritual (parishara), and recent orekotón rituals (areruya,...