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Inga Rimakkuna: Indigenous Frontiers in the Pastaza Basin, Peru
Homan, Joshua
Homan, Joshua
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Abstract
This dissertation examines the lives of Inga-speaking indigenous peoples living in the Pastaza basin in the northern reaches of the Peruvian Amazon. Through an in-depth historical overview, I demonstrate how the imposition of Inga (a dialect of Quechua) by Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century acted as a means of binding multiple indigenous groups together within the mission system. Drawing on historical documents from the Jesuit Era through the 20th century, I detail the ethnogenesis of the Inga-speaking peoples in relation to other groups within the region. Rather than focusing on a singular, bounded ethnic group as has often been the case in Amazonia, I explore ongoing processes of ethnogenesis—of becoming Inga—using several crucial ethnographic tropes, such as kinship, marriage, shamanism, politics, and community foundation. I demonstrate the fluidity of identities in the indigenous frontiers of the Pastaza basin, at the margins of indigenous territories, problematizing traditional understandings of indigenous sociality in Amazonia. Through relationships with both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, as well as extractive enterprises, NGOs, and the Peruvian state, the Inga-speaking peoples of the Pastaza basin continue to forge new identities within these indigenous frontiers. It is precisely within these frontiers, I argue, that the work of ethnogenesis takes place—the translation of culture and language, the production of new, emergent cultural systems, and the creation and maintenance of ethnic boundaries.
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Date
2018-12-31
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University of Kansas
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Keywords
Cultural anthropology, Ethnogenesis, Indigeneity, Interethnic Relations, Pastaza, Peruvian Amazon, Quechua