Museums and indigenous memories: The collections of the Katxuyana and the contemporaneity of musealized material culture

Abstract

Ethnographic collections are at the centre of a debate about how to give them new meanings, calling into question the actuality of material culture preserved by museums. This debate also refers to the promotion of otherness and the protagonism of ‘peoples represented’ by museums. Preserved for more than 50 years in European and Brazilian museums, the collections of the Amerindian Katxuyana comprise approximately 700 objects, collected by different expeditions at different times. These objects are material records of daily life, rituals or festive moments, and reveal a little of the life of this people in the first half of the twentieth century. Some of these collections have been the subject of collaborative experiments between researchers and the Katxuyana, stimulating memories and generating knowledge. The case analyzed, which brings the Katxuyana closer to the artifacts produced by their ancestors, indicates both the complexity and the limits of collaborative experiences among indigenous peoples, museums and researchers.