The sickly smell of contact: disease, history and environmental degradation among Karitiana in the western Amazon

Abstract

Based on a unique interpretation that Karitiana Tupi group-Arikém in Rondonia, proposed for an event that followed on television, this paper reflects on the relationship between disease, history and environment in the context of interethnic relations and the serious and complex problems created by the contact for indigenous societies in lowland south America. The text suggests that Karitiana are aware of the various events around the world, and reflect on them from their cosmological parameters. So, produce reviews of global reach that can be taken as forms of knowledge and critical environment, to include, for example, relations with the story, with the cosmos and its inhabitants, human and nonhuman.