For Kichwa-speaking Runa of Ecuador’s tropical forest region, narratives about muskuy experiences—dreams and visions—are revered sources of knowledge. Muskuy is a real (non-fantasy) experience in which humans communicate with each other and non-human persons that inhabit their environment, acquiring information and powers in the process. Through analysis of video recordings of muskuy narratives told by Kichwa speakers (2014-2016), this dissertation explores how verbal artistry, performance technique, and emotional resonance are central to knowledge acquisition and transmission. Specifically, narratives are deemed truthful and authoritative when they evoke empathy and memory through imagery, gesture, and vocal dynamics. Whereas ethnography and psychoanalysis have been the prevalent models for scholarship of indigenous dream practices, this is among the first scholarly work to use diverse methods of ethnopoetic analysis such as close reading, performance studies (Bauman, Hymes), linguistic analysis (Mannheim, Nuckolls), and ethnographic contextualization (Galli, Uzendoski) to elucidate the aesthetics of Kichwa muskuy narratives.

Chapter 1 examines muskuy as a source of gender-specific knowledge and authority conveyed in the narrative of a master ceramicist woman’s dream interaction with a Clay Master Spirit. Narrative skill is one manifestation of mature womanhood or manhood that is developed partially through muskuy. Through artful storytelling, a narrator demonstrates her feminine strength.

Chapter 2 elucidates the central role of dialogue in articulating authority and credibility. In a narrative of a boy’s transformation into an anaconda, implication and allusion induce dialogic resonances (Bakhtin), while quotation and perspective-marking with “evidential” enclitics animate authoritative voices within the narrative. Additionally, interlocutors substantiate narrative information through commentary and story contributions.

Chapter 3 compares a traditional muskuy narrative from the community of Sarayaku, Ecuador, to the same story transformed for digital media platforms that in turn give it the force of prophecy in activist contexts. Thus, strategic and creative modifications allow muskuy narratives to remain an authoritative source of knowledge for Runa as they are recontextualized for non-indigenous audiences.

The truth and authority of muskuy narratives emerge from artistry that engages listeners’ imagination, memory and emotion. Affecting and aesthetically complex, these stories are an ancestral form that remains salient for Runa today.