Northern Peruvian shamans’ anti-anthropocentric eschatological narratives infused with scientific climate change discourses rewrite the climate change debate from a nonhuman point of view. By engaging in ethnographic research in Northern Peru through an indigenous decolonizing framework, I show how shamanic engagements with ancestor landscapes can restore a sense of belonging to the earth to meet the challenge of predatory capitalism and catastrophic climate crises. By decentering the human and gaining awareness of the inevitable end of the space-time of modern industrial civilization and humanity—and of a world that will continue to exist without us—shamans inspire us to respond to the climate crisis. When we accept that humanity will ultimately be destroyed by climate change events, shamans reason, we might mitigate our suffering by engaging in ethical, reciprocal, multispecies relationships to postpone the end of humanity, and to reimagine our existence in a post-human world.

 

Ana Mariella Bacigalupo is Professor of Anthropology at SUNY Buffalo.

 

This event is presented in collaboration as part of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion’s Biennial Conference “Religiosities, Ecologies, and Environmentalisms in the Age of the Anthropocene” and the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture’s Conference “Crossing Borders, Transgressing Boundaries: Religion, Migration, and Climate Change.” The Walter H. Capps Center is co-sponsoring this event.