Free for All: Foods, Landscapes, and Lives in the Paraguayan Chaco

  • Felice S. Wyndham Research Associate, University of Oxford Zoology & the Smithsonian Institution; Reviews Editor, Ethnobiology Letters. 290 Stanton Way, Athens, GA.
Keywords: Ayoreo, Paraguayan Chaco, Wild foods, Landscape ethnobiology

Abstract

Foods and foodscapes structure and inform our experiences as ethnobiologists and ethnographers, the way we interact with and learn from teachers in study sites, and how relations between peoples and between people and landscapes unfold over time. This short memoir essay revisits my education in foodscapes with the Ayoreo community of Jesudi in the Paraguayan Chaco through stories and experiences of food procurement and distribution. From landscapes in which food was free for all (non-monetized) to contemporary encroachments and land-grabbing in the Chaco for globally-connected markets, the transformations have been rapid and witnessed by Ayoreo and other dispossessed indigenous groups.

Author Biography

Felice S. Wyndham, Research Associate, University of Oxford Zoology & the Smithsonian Institution; Reviews Editor, Ethnobiology Letters. 290 Stanton Way, Athens, GA.
Felice S. Wyndham is an independent scholar and Research Associate at the University of Oxford department of Zoology, the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution and Reviews Editor, Ethnobiology Letters.

References

Bessire, L. 2005. Isolated Ayoreo: Will History Repeat Itself in the Gran Chaco? Before Farming 2:1–4. DOI:10.3828/bfarm.2005.2.1

Bessire, L. 2014. Behold the Black Caiman: A Chronicle of Ayoreo Life. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.

Blaser, M. 2010. Storytelling Globalization from the Chaco and Beyond. Duke University Press, Durham, NC.

Ermine, W. 2007. The Ethical Space of Engagement. Indigenous Law Journal 6:193–203.

Glauser, B. 2011. Being Indigenous: The Concept of Indigeneity, a Conversation with Two Ayoreo Leaders. In The Politics of Indigeneity: Dialogues and Reflections on Indigenous Activism, edited by S. Venkateswar and E. Hughes, pp. 21–44. Zed Books, London.

Mauss, M. 1990 (1950). The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Routledge, London.

Picanerai, A. 2011. Online audio interview on the work of the Unión de Nativos Ayoreos de Paraguay. Available at: www.iniciativaamotocodie.org/unap/files/entrevista_aquino-picanerai.mp3. Accessed on 3/20/2011.

Published
2016-12-31
How to Cite
Wyndham, F. S. (2016). Free for All: Foods, Landscapes, and Lives in the Paraguayan Chaco. Ethnobiology Letters, 7(2), 14–22. https://doi.org/10.14237/ebl.7.2.2016.731
Section
Perspectives