Volume 19, Issue 2 (2023)

Volume 19 (2) of Tipití puts together a dossier on multilingualism, three independent articles, and the annual special section organized by the collaborating editors.

The dossier makes an important contribution to expanding the understanding of multilingualism in lowland South America, in part by approaching the topic through historical sources, but also through the acknowledgement that there is a need for a shift in perspective. Rather than taking the identification of the group category to which a language belongs as the basis for a discussion of multilingualism, it suggests that seeing language as embedded in meaningful practices, such as shamanism or music, gives a richer insight into multilingual worlds.

The introduction to the dossier provides a comprehensive review of the literature of the past twenty years, emphasizing the growing interaction between linguistics and anthropology in understanding processes of language contact, change, and maintenance, and the complex relationships these maintain with social, cultural, and political contexts over time. The articles present updated and in-depth empirical analyses of a broad geographical reach, including the multiethnic complexes of the Upper Rio Negro, the Pantanal, Vaupes, and southwestern Amazonia, over the long term. They also provide an overview of the main theoretical debates that have been developing in work on each region.

The three research articles that follow the dossier are contributions to other key fields in Amerindian studies. From the angle of a dense ethnography of the Karitiana focusing on how animals learn from their relationships with humans, the first article contributes to the ongoing debates on landscape formation in Amazonia. Through a challenging historical perspective on Shipibo uses of ayahuasca, the second article contributes to rethinking Amazonian ayahuasca ritual practices in the longue durée. The third research article puts an ethnographic focus on the Upper Xingu and the experiences of Mehinako women giving birth in hospitals, which now constitute the principal locus for Indigenous people to be born in Brazil. Adopting a relational approach to childbirth, care, and corporality, it introduces the concept of ‘interference zones’ to address relational fields previously dubbed ‘intermedical.’

The collaborating editors’ section offers an exceptional contribution to Indigenous anthropology through the enlightening voice of Felipe Tuxá, who expands his arguments on white lethality and on the ongoing process of integrating Indigenous knowledges in universities.