Jotï ecogony, Venezuelan Amazon
The current environmental crisis permeates the discourse and concerns of people all over the world. Consideration of diverse environmental ethics showing the alternative ways in which people conceptualize and relate to nature and natural resources are critical for bringing about more sustainable human behaviors. After a brief review of Western historical notions of nature, this work explores the ecogony, or causal reasons, that trigger the behavior of the Jot¨ an Amerindian people of the Venezuelan Amazon, with other entities and the forest that they inhabit. The analysis presented synthesizes 15 years of transdisciplinary ethno-ecological research comprising quantitative and qualitative methods (collection of herbarium voucher specimens, floristic inventories in forest plots, structured interviews focused on plot vegetation, semi-structured interviews of life-histories, participant observation, time allocation studies, food resource accounting, focal person following observations, garden crop inventories and censuses, mapping of wild resource harvest locations, among others). Jot¨ pragmatic and ideological tenets generate a distinctive environmental ethics based on ecogonic nodes. Notions of interdependence, humanity and person are articulated on a daily basis through several dynamics: (1) hyper-awareness of all living things’ dependence on each other and other elements of the biophysical environment at macroscales and microscales, (2) the construction of human spiritual, conscious, physical and agentive constituents from a variety of diverse botanical and zoological species and mineral components of their homeland, and (3) an understanding of the aggregate surroundings, including a significant portion of the biotic and abiotic components, as potential subjects with awareness, creativity and moral stances.