
WATERING THE EARTH WITH TEARS: THE AMAZONIAN SOCIAL RELATION TO NATURE
An Open Access Environmental Humanities Digital Project
INTRODUCTION
This project presents the Amazonian relation to nature by linking short videos of testimonies, stories, and songs to the names of the plant and animal species that are the subjects of the narratives. The species and videos are also linked to the various stages of the human lifecycle through which they are experienced. Furthermore, they are linked to the sensory mode through which the species is perceived or engaged in the video: sound (language, singing), sight (gesture, the visual arts), smell, o taste. Our approach is to interview knowledgeable individuals in the forest setting where their memories are activated by the plants and animals they see. The videos presented here are edited down from these longer interviews to exemplify key aspects of Kichwa thinking about nature or particular species. Although the subtitles are set to English they can be changed to Spanish or Kichwa by clicking the settings icon. Much of our recent work focuses on how the Kichwa language serves as a vehicle through which the relation to nature is shaped and expressed.
VIDEOS

Wao Tededo Narrators
Species

TOPICS
TOPICS

The Land
Relatives who went away: Origins Stories and the Meaning of Biodiversity
Sky, Sun, Moon and Stars and Thunder
Amazonian Arts and the Senses
How language and the arts mediate between humans and other species
SOUND
Human Language and the Languages of Nature

The Social Meaning of Forest Sounds
Singing with the voice of birds
Quechua Real Words: An Audiovisual Corpus of expressive ideophones that evoke the sound of the forest.
Singing with the voice of birds
Sound in humor evoking of animal/human similarity