Politics and Epistemologies in Collaborative and Engaged Research Action with the Mebengokré in the Amazon

Abstract The essay explores the experiences of direct engagement with the demands of the Mebengokré people in the Amazon rainforest and their potential to shape academic practices. For nearly a decade, the Mebengokré have been confronting the socioenvironmental impacts of the construction of the Belo Monte hydro dam on their land, explicitly urging anthropologists and other academics to develop collaborative research initiatives to support their struggles. These include publishing papers, carrying out research projects, and co-curating exhibitions. This paper investigates how engaging with the Mebengokré’s demands and epistemologies affects the creation and dissemination of anthropological knowledge and the researcher’s positionality. Moreover, it proposes that even when anthropologists engage politically with their interlocutors over an extended period, the growing emergence of claims for connections between epistemologies and politics, as expressed by the Indigenous people in the Amazon, challenges existing models of academic production.