Being(s) of Waters and Forests
In this article, the authors propose to document the construction of mythical images in Indigenous societies and cosmologies in Quebec and Brazil. The comparative reading developed aims more specifically at analyzing the place of the forest and water in the relations between humans and non-humans in local cosmologies. Both the territoriality of Atikamekw Nehirowisiw and the territoriality of the forest peoples in the Brazilian Amazon must be understood within the framework of relationships conceived, named, told, lived, negotiated and shared with the sensitive, sensory and non-human world. Field research carried out in Quebec and in the Brazilian Amazon, with First Nations, Indigenous groups and traditional communities, allows us to propose a comparative reading of the place of water and the forest within oral tradition, knowledge and relationships that extend to infinity: knowing the forest, naming its rules and conceiving lived feelings as a harbinger of the presence of invisible beings are devices of an ethic lived and shared between those who have lived and those who can potentially experience this relationship.