The Possibilities and Limits of Collaborative Anthropology in Amazonia - SARG Seminar

Abstract: In this paper I explore the purposes, diverse personal investments and unexpected consequences of collaborative research with Waorani communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Based in part on my new book Translating Worlds, Defending Land: Collaborations for Indigenous Rights and Environmental Politics in Amazonia (2025), it describes how a group of young Waorani adults, with whom I worked for years to document their ‘endangered’ indigenous language, became linguists, ethnographers and ultimately environmental leaders on a global scale. As they translate their territorial struggle against oil extraction into the language of conservation, the alliances, misunderstandings and conflicts that emerge in these contexts challenge the assumption that productive collaborations reflect - or require - shared purposes. Their work offers critical reflection on collaboration as an anthropological concept, method, and practice. It also illustrates how Indigenous Amazonian epistemologies offer new ways of rethinking age-old questions about what constitutes ethnographic knowledge and who it is for.