This is a part of the article series Decolonial Praxis: Going Beyond Empty Words, edited by Fernando David Márquez Duarte, Dulce Alarcón Payán and Javier Daniel Alarcón Mares. Editorial and Translation Assistant: Lorenia Gutiérrez Moreto Cruz.

Indigenous people represent about 6.2%—more than 476 million—of the world population, in both Latin America and the Caribbean, 5.8% of the inhabitants belong to one of the 522 indigenous peoples (France 24 2022, United Nations nd). In Peru, the Peruvian State recognizes the existence of 55 indigenous peoples in its territory, of which almost 4 million speak 47 languages ​​(Ministry of Culture 2022). The majority of these human groups inhabit the Amazon region of this country. The relevance that indigenous people have had in recent years as part of global, regional and local political and social strategies is correlated with the increase in the visibility of the various types of literature that these groups have been positioning in the world. public space. In that sense, for the work in progress it is important to focus on these other materialities (oral stories, stories, myths, songs, dreams, among others), which refer to other worlds and which are told from other places of interpretation, thought and feeling.

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The aforementioned must be understood from a first criticism of the way in which we perceive and approach the world. There is no doubt that the models we use to read, think and generate knowledge, that is, the epistemologies and paradigms that make up our intellectual baggage, also exert a profound influence on the production of knowledge, as well as on the construction of criteria of truth about the reality (Chávez 2014). These currents of thought shape the research questions that scientific communities formulate when constructing their objects of study, as Bourdieu (2000) points out. In this sense, it is imperative to rethink the various studies and historiographic balances that have addressed indigenous knowledge, both in their content and in their own places of enunciation. In response to this, ,seek to think about theoretical perspectives that are closer to the concepts, thoughts and feelings of those who are the object of study and who, in turn, produce their own interpretations for their diverse knowledge.

If the scientific knowledge generated from Western epistemologies can be questioned, this challenge can arise from the diverse epistemologies located in the south (Meneses 2008). As Meneses and Bidaseca (2018) have pointed out, it is necessary to recognize the ideological value and validity of indigenous knowledge and not perpetuate the status quo of a conception of knowledge—universal and valid for all diversities—that has been historically dominant.

Why a decolonial approach?

The decolonial inflection is an intellectual current defined around a series of problems derived from colonialism and modernity, which is based on the intellectual and political experiences and trajectories of Latin America. This group postulates that modernity arises in the company of coloniality, so that both are part of an indivisible process in which the latter represents the shadow aspect of the former (Mignolo 2003).

The pioneer in postulating reflections on the coloniality of power and being was Aníbal Quijano, a Peruvian researcher with an important impact on the academic and political discussion on decoloniality in Latin America. Quijano (1992) explains that the paradigm of rationality-modernity, which accompanies coloniality, established the universal bases of knowledge and relations between a global north and the rest of the world; so that this north concentrates ‘all forms of control of subjectivity, and especially of knowledge, of the production of knowledge’ (Quijano 2000, 29).

Restrepo and Martínez (2010, 37–38) define decolonial inflection as:

[…] the set of critical thoughts on the dark side of modernity produced by the  'wretched of the earth ' (Fanon 1963) that seek to transform not only the content but the terms-conditions in which Eurocentrism and coloniality have been reproduced in the world system, inferiorizing human beings (coloniality of being), marginalizing and making systems of knowledge invisible (coloniality of knowledge). and hierarchizing human groups and places in a pattern of global power for their exploitation for the sake of expanded capital accumulation (coloniality of power).

[…] the set of critical thoughts on the dark side of modernity produced by the  'wretched of the earth ' (Fanon 1963) that seek to transform not only the content but the terms-conditions in which Eurocentrism and coloniality have been reproduced in the world system, inferiorizing human beings (coloniality of being), marginalizing and making systems of knowledge invisible (coloniality of knowledge). and hierarchizing human groups and places in a pattern of global power for their exploitation for the sake of expanded capital accumulation (coloniality of power).

For this study, the primary focus is on addressing lies in the coloniality of knowledge, understood as the epistemic dimension of coloniality of power. While the second, in the vision of Quijano (2000a), is understood as a global power pattern of relations of domination/exploitation/confrontation around work, nature, sex, subjectivity and authority. The coloniality of knowledge constitutes the basis for the subalternization, folklorization and invisibilization of a multiplicity of knowledge and knowledge that does not follow Eurocentric forms of knowledge production. As Walsh (2007, 104) indicates, the coloniality of knowledge 'not only established Eurocentrism as a unique perspective of knowledge, but, at the same time, completely discarded indigenous and Afro intellectual production as 'knowledge ' and, consequently, its intellectual capacity"

Restrepo and Martínez (2010) maintain that the coloniality of knowledge builds an evident epistemic superiority, which is manifested in the claim of universality of a specific category of knowledge: scientific knowledge. Added to the above is the characterization of objectivity and neutrality of this knowledge, characteristics that imply that, when acquiring knowledge, the knowing subject can distance from the object of study. This would demonstrate that said agent has the capacity to de-subjectivize itself, that is, to transcend the subjective. Only in this way can knowledge be built that is free of interests and valid to have a universal character.

In contrast to a non-place in the production of knowledge, to this 'zero hubris' from which these are produced (Castro-Gómez 2007); Grosfoguel (2006) suggests thinking in terms of a corpo-politics of knowledge, that is, understanding that all knowledge is situated according to the power relations inscribed in the body of the subject. By subverting Descartes ' well-known 'I think therefore I am, 'the decolonial inflection argues in favor of the principle of 'I am where I think' (Maldonado-Torres 2007, 193).

An important point here is to highlight the reflection of Castro-Gómez (2007, 90) regarding understanding that the decolonial inflection does not propose an epistemic obscurantism or a total rejection of scientific knowledge in favor of a 'Latin American autochthonism, ethnocentric culturalisms and nationalisms. 'populists'; On the contrary, it seeks to expand the field of visibility, which means, the granting of conceptual validity to various domains such as 'emotions, intimacy, common sense, ancestral knowledge and corporality'; In this way, we are committed to 'integrative thinking.'

Along these lines, this research follows the path of decolonial inflection as it recognizes other knowledge—produced by the Kukama Kukamiria indigenous people—not only as thoughts that can be added to a large matrix of universal reasoning; but in the sense of 'a plural thought/knowledge from the colonial difference(s), connected by the common experience of colonialism and marked by the colonial horizon of modernity' (Walsh 2007, 110).

Based on what was mentioned above, it is also necessary to situate this research in a place of intellectual production from the south. Thus, I consider it essential to share three characteristics that situate this text: the geographical space where this knowledge is being written, the place of enunciation of the author of this text, as well as the bodies/territories to which I refer with this research. Regarding the first point, this text is being written in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, thanks to the support of a doctoral scholarship; Regarding the place of enunciation, the writer is a Peruvian researcher self-identified as a Chi 'ixi mestizo—following the idea of ​​Rivera (1993) who explains that the Ch 'ixi mestizo identity alludes to a hybridity, a sum of contradictions that does not seek a synthesis of these and that assume the white and indigenous part stained in both cases by the other; so I declare myself as such due to the mixture of the distant Quechua tradition of my maternal family born in Huarochiri (Lima) with a non-indigenous Lima tradition from my paternal family; and finally I address the knowledge and wisdom of the Kukama Kukamiria indigenous people who inhabit the Latin American Amazonian and that are shared publicly on different digital channels, as well as in their own territories.

Cosmologies and ontologies in a decolonial key

In this text I decided to take the conceptualization of cosmologies derived from indigenous studies that address the ways of thinking of indigenous groups in the Amazon. In that sense, this concept follows a critical and decolonial approach from the ontological turn, based on 'the idea that multiple worlds exist and that alterity is a function of the existence of these worlds' (Tola 2016, 132). Dos Santos (2019) states that Amerindian cosmologies explain both the composition of the natural and social world, as well as its functioning, seen from Amerindian societies. In that sense, for Descola (2014, 441), a cosmology would be defined as 'simply the form of distribution in space of the components of an ontology and the kind of relations that conjoin them'; so that Amazonian cosmologies would be rooted in the deep interconnection between these so-called 'ontologies', that is, humans and non-humans (animals, plants, nature, spirits, etc.).

If cosmologies refer to 'the set of legal and regulatory texts that govern the life in common ' (Descola 2014, 441), ontologies would be related to 'the type of constitution that specifies in each of these regimes the balance of power, the nature of the assemblies, the forms of representation ' (Descola 2014, 441). Thus, ontologies would be theoretical versions of the ways in which certain groups of people schematize their experience of approach and knowledge about the world (Descola 2014).

How does decolonial theory relate to the analytical concepts of cosmologies and ontologies? If, from decolonial theory, Western classification systems are questioned as the only ways of situating oneself in the world, it follows that the dichotomy of nature and culture can be understood as a hegemonic way of perceiving the world. In that sense, as Descola (2014, 436) states, the ontological turn—the opening towards debates on cosmologies and ontologies of the Amazonian indigenous peoples—would be a political commitment to put an end to 'those Eurocentric categories and with the colonial project.' Therefore, the recognition of other knowledge and knowledge produced by indigenous American peoples that go beyond this central split becomes relevant as part of the decolonial inflection, being key to forge and build new concepts from the places that were colonized and that serve to explain those historical phenomena, 'without being subservient to the ways these processes have been conceptualized in anthropocentric accounts of Western history' (Descola 2014, 436).

Amazonian cosmologies and the decoloniality of knowledge converge in their criticism of the way in which knowledge and power have been historically constructed. Both seek to overcome the hegemony of the Western worldview and recognize the ontological and epistemic diversity of indigenous cultures. Therefore, embracing these concepts implies, therefore, situating ourselves to recognize a position that is both geographical (the ways of imagining the world of diverse Amazonian........

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