Between being and having: existential philosophy and relational indigenous ontologies

This article investigates the philosophical and ontological foundations of Indigenous thought in Brazil, examining how ancestral knowledge, cosmologies of reciprocity, and relational ethics articulate alternative understandings of existence. Drawing on interviews with Indigenous leaders and knowledge keepers from diverse ethnic groups, the study analyzes practices such as agriculture, extractivism, art, and body painting as expressions of a philosophy that unites being and having. Supported by theoretical perspectives from anthropologists such as Tim Ingold, Philippe Descola, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro; philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Erich Fromm, Emmanuel Levinas, and Martin Heidegger; and the historian Carlo Ginzburg, this research adopts a qualitative and hermeneutic approach to interpret these practices as forms of knowledge and resistance. The analysis reveals that Indigenous ontologies conceive life as an interdependent network in which humans, non-humans, and the environment coexist through reciprocity and care. The article argues that, in Indigenous philosophy, to have only finds meaning when rooted in being — a relational mode of existence that challenges Western logics of possession and accumulation. Ultimately, it proposes that Indigenous epistemologies offer critical pathways for rethinking sustainability, ethics, and the very condition of being-in-the-world.