In Huni Kuin ayahuasca shamanism, ritual image-songs reveal how embodied perception and synesthesia transform bodily sensations into vision, rhythm, and sound. The experience involves becoming-other: knowing by seeing through another's eyes, being covered with their skin or ornaments, and singing with their voice. This other-becoming, understood in a Deleuzian sense, situates lived experience between self and other. The phrase "you are what you eat" carries implications for health and for acquiring the agentive and perceptive capabilities of other beings. The ritual technique of "almost becoming" involves alternatingly producing and undoing temporary transformations through song.
The ontological turn in anthropological theory is examined through three interconnected approaches. First, the academic success of Amerindian ontologies is situated within debates on the political consequences of the anthropocene. Second, an archaeology of the concept of perspectivism shows that Amerindian ethnology has long pursued Copernican turnings, from Montaigne onward. Finally, the article argues for a return to aesthetics and poetics as key domains for exploring how different ontologies teach us to see the world differently. Understanding multiple versions of Amerindian relational ontologies requires perceiving the relational character of the aesthetics they reveal, as illustrated by Huni Kuin (Cashinahua) aesthetics in ayahuasca song.