This paper aims to explore the relationship between indigenous populations and urban spaces through a case study centrered on the Marubo, a Panoan-speaking people of the Vale do Javari indigenous reservation (Amazonas state, Brazil). The paper investigates the shamanistic and mythological backgrounds mobilized in the comprehension of cities, spacial displacements and relations with alterity. Through the recent contributions of lowland south-american ethnology, this study offers parameters to the analysis of conceptual problems related to the crossing of indigenous and non-indigenous pressupositions about territories, change and difference.
urban spaces; indigenous populations; Amazonia; ethnology; shamanism