Rethinking Human-Animal Relations in the Americas

Abstract

The text presents excerpts from the roundtable “Rethinking Human-Animal Relations in the Americas,” which brought together researchers in history, anthropology, and archaeology to explore the complex interdependence between people and animals in the American continent. The discussion focused on three main themes: first, the catastrophic impact of colonialism on human-animal relations, especially in the practices of Andean camelid rearing and the imposition of colonial views that treated animals as commodities; second, the need to critical engage with Indigenous cosmologies of more-than-human worlds, questioning Western categories such as “animal” and re-evaluating the widespread application of theoretical models like Perspectivism; and, third, the urgency to decolonize human-animal studies through interdisciplinarity approaches and methodologies that prioritize Indigenous concepts, categories and epistemologies. Participants emphasized the importance of new types of evidence, such as colonial-period zooarchaeology and linguistics data, to better understand the cultural transformations, negotiations, and form of resistances that have shaped human-animals in the Americas.