Living with the Other: Amerindian Identity and the Experience of Contact

This research project will contribute to a better understanding of political identity and belonging among indigenous peoples of Amazonia. Given their current socio-political context as a transnational indigenous people, I ask how do Mastanahua understand and experience their "ethnic" belonging and, consequently, their relations with the multiple "others" surrounding them, including the two national states (Peru and Brazil) of which they form a part? To provide an account and an explanation of Mastanahua understandings of experience regarding their increasingly complex contemporary social web, I propose to investigate the narratives of their recent history, their quotidian exchanges with their multiple neighbors, and their understanding of these exchanges.