Janet M. Chernela is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Latin American Studies Center at the University of Maryland.  After receiving her PhD from Columbia University in 1983, she served on the faculty of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (National Institute of Amazonian Research, INPA) in Manaus.  She has worked among indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin for over three decades.  Her research interests include local knowledge, indigenous rights and organizations; gender and language.  She is the founder of AMARN/Numia Kura, one of the oldest ongoing indigenous associations in Brazil and former president of the international Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America. For the past several summers she has led an “Environmental Education and Indigenous Peoples” field course in the Brazilan Amazon introducing university students to Kayapo and other indigenous communities and exploring tropical forest ecology and Amazonian development issues.

Current work:

 

Recent publications:

Chernela, Janet M. (2012) “Indigenous Rights and Ethno-Development: The Life of an Indigenous Organization in the Rio Negro of Brazil,” Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America: Vol. 9: Iss. 2, Article 5.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol9/iss2/5

Chernela, Janet M. (2012) Mascarading the Voice: Texts of Self in the Brazilian Northwest Amazon. Journal of Anthropological Research 68(3)90-120.

Contact: chernela [at] gmail.com