Based on the assumption that the Holocaust has become a paradigm that has dominated the memory and genocide research and discourse in the West, I would like to try to broaden the perspective and create new possibilities for theorizing collectively traumatic events by reflecting on indigenous forms of remembrance. During my two research stays in 2016 in Leticia, Amazonas, I approached the topic of indigenous memory, especially of the so-called People of the Center (esp. Gente del Centro), i.e. the indigenous population of the Bora language, who originally inhabited the territory between the rivers of Putomayo and Caquetá, and were dramatically decimated during the Amazon rubber boom (1879-1912). The crimes committed by Casa Arana are a traumatic event for the entire indigenous population of the region. Not only because of the violence of the "whites", but also because of the collaboration of certain indigenous groups with the rubber collectors in the extermination of the enemy tribes. For this reason, it has become necessary for the indigenous populations to develop a pedagogy of reconciliation and peace, a policy of reorganization and rebuilding of a society that is today multi-ethnic and fragmented. Collective memory plays an essential role in this process and the way it has been organized poses a highly interesting challenge to Western concepts and contexts. The underlying interconnections between the memory concepts of Aleida and Jan Assmann (cultural and communicative memory) and the indigenous "basket" system (Echeverri 2012) have become an impulse for me to resort to the multidirectional memory method (Rothberg 2009) and explore the fields of meaning of collective memory in the context of the globalizing dynamic of post-Holocaust memory and its possible entanglements with such marginalized memory discourses like the indigenous one.
