Introduction

Abstract

This chapter introduces the content of the first section of this book. The speech of the shaman Timóteo da Silva Verá Tupã Popygua, about the cultural roots of knowledge, to a conference in the House of Indigenous Cultures, at the Institute of Psychology of the University of São Paulo, guides the reflections to the construction of a foresee indigenous psychology. Its present construction report to a practical academic work developed with Guarani communities in São Paulo, Brazil, the Amerindian Support Network, and to an ongoing articulation between a semiotic-cultural constructivist framework in cultural psychology and the Amerindian perspectivism in anthropology. Assuming the relevance to observe the historical-philosophical roots of psychology in Western tradition, the author observes that the cultural melting pot that constituted the complex ethos of modern European societies was confronted with real and imaginary images of other peoples in the recently explored lands worldwide. Different cultural traditions participated in the upbringing of the newborn psychological science of the nineteenth century. However, the participation of these other cultural traditions was and still is subjected to asymmetries in which hegemonic notions continue to silence emerging voices.