Making kinship with plants and the multiple meanings of care in Amazonian Indigenous gardens

This paper focuses on the bonds of kinship and care between humans, cultivated plants, and other-than-human beings in Indigenous gardens, myths, rituals, and shamanism, across Lowland South America. Drawing on Krahô ethnography and a review of ethnological literature, it highlights the contributions of Americanist ethnology to wider debates about multispecies relation, particularly with regard to vegetal agency. By exploring the ambivalent meanings of care- such as “caring,” “raising,” and “nurturing,” as well as “being careful,” “having respect,” and “taking precautions”- I examine how kinship relations between humans and their cultivated plants are made through care and unmade through its absence (which may point to dehumanization and transformation of person). I argue that the vitality, abundance, and diversity of gardens emerge through relations of interdependence, bodily co-constitution, and reciprocity among humans, plants, spirits, and cosmological “owners,” also considering the dangers of daily life and relationships of counter-predation. I also suggest that vegetal regeneration is significant for understanding processes of kinship, its continuity, transformation, and renewal in Indigenous worlds, offering a broader perspective on the intertwined life cycles of humans and plants.