Lévi-Strauss approach to myth as transformation group outlines variability: each myth can be seen as a set of imaginary variations, which arrange again sensible categories in shifting accounts. So, it defines by contrast the native thought conceits, giving way in native reflection, and the storyteller can be understood, therefore, as the main performer of this reflection. The structuralist "dialog between myths" is at least a fitting support to the post-modernist "dialog between subjects". This paper exemplify these proposals with some myths of Panoan-speaking Yaminawa, Yawanawa and Kaxinawa peoples, concerning the relations among human and animal, and setting up different versions of these categories. It also comments current discussions on indigenous cosmologies or philosophies and on their epistemological value.
mythology; Lévi-Strauss; indigenous philosophy; Panoan; Yaminawa