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Indigenous peoples have been cast as representing modernity?s fading premodern0Other. This volume starts from the opposite assumption, namely that0contemporary indigenous peoples are specifically modern societies, profoundly0shaped by their specific ways of dealing with, making use of and transforming the0contexts imposed by nation-states, colonial systems and globalization. They do that0from a position alternative to that of the modern West. The book aims to0understand these processes and the resulting forms of indigenous modernities in0Lowland South America through ethnographic case studies. It argues that there is0more about indigenous modernities than the simple assertion that indigenous0peoples are now modern too.0Indigenous groups are modern in multiple, complex and alternative ways. As the0contributions show this holds true for current forms of shamanism and indigenous0Christian churches, new meanings of traditional clothing, as well as indigenous0cosmologies that confront western concepts, technology and welfare programs.0The notion of indigenous modernities refers to a space beyond old modernist0dichotomies. The paradox, like the disturbing Otherness it brings to our attention,0is the result of a relation in which assumptions we take ontologically for granted0are confronted by other realities. Looking at the creative ways indigenous peoples?0practices subvert such assumptions may result in substantial irritation and is a0starting point for a renewed reflection on classical assumptions about modernities0and indigenous ways of both being modern and exceeding modernity in the face of0long-standing power inequalities and the imposition of logics of Western ontology