In general, the role of historical investigation within ethnological studies is quite secondary and limited. Alternately, I intend to bring both disciplines together in order to show the diversity of indigenous peoples' characteristics throughout the history of the State of Amazonas. The ethnic uniqueness should be approached, I suggest, not as a reifying specificity but as something essentially variable and dynamic, as a result of a fundamental process of adaptation to different kinds of social and natural environments. In my ethnographic research study on the Ticunas, they are usually mentioned in reference to concrete and distinctive historical situations in which their beliefs, traditions and organizational principles emerge in connection with Brazilian broader society's determinations and projects.
historical situation; territorialization processes; historical anthropology; indigenous peoples' political anthropology
