Collaborative workshop with the Kamayurá at the museum

At the National Museum of Ethnology

Collaborative museology workshop with the Kamayurá indigenous people

InDigit exploratory project completes task 2 of the research plan

21/03/2025

On February 27^th and 28^th, 2025, two representatives of the Kamayurá Archive project, Kanawayuri Marcelo Kamaiurá and Auakamu Kamayurá, from the Kamayurá indigenous people (Alto Xingu, Brazil), took part in a collaborative museology workshop at the Portuguese National Museum of Ethnology (NME), as part of exploratory project ‘InDigit: The indigenous peoples of the South American Lowlands and the digital transition in European museums’, funded by Associate Laboratory IN2PAST.

The workshop was attended by various members of the NME team – Gonçalo Amaro (museum director), Alexandre Weffort (coordination), Alexandra Oliveira (documentation), Alexandre Raposo (logistics), Daniel Meira (communication), Iria Simões (photographic record), Raquel Ferreira (conservation), and Sónia Henrique (collections management) – as well as anthropologist Luísa Valentini (CNPq / UFBA), who has supported the Kamayurá Archive project for more than a decade, and three members of team InDigit/ IN2PAST: Rodrigo Lacerda (PI, CRIA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST), Elisabete Pereira (Co-PI, IHC – University of Évora / IN2PAST), and João Leal (CRIA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST).

The collaborative museology workshop focused on the Kamayurá collection gathered by Victor and Françoise Bandeira in 1964-65, during their visit to the Ipavu village of the Kamayurá people, as part of the couple’s trip to Latin America to collect elements of tangible culture for the Overseas Ethnology Museum (then a project; now the NME), at the request of its founder, anthropologist Jorge Dias. The Kamayurá’s visit also included a general tour of the museum, including the exhibitions and the various technical reserve collections.

The main aim of InDigit is to analyse the differences and similarities between the theories and practices of European museums, specifically the NME, and Kamayurá conceptions of collections management, particularly with regard to classification systems, access protocols, conceptions of ownership, care regimes and notions of temporality. In this sense, the workshop also included discussion seminars between the various participants on archival practices, museography and object conservation.

It is worth noting that the collaborative museology workshop achieved its intended success thanks to the long-standing work of the Kamayurá Archive project. As Kanawayuri Kamaiurá and Mayaru Kamayurá explain in the paper ‘Arquivo Kamayurá: pesquisa, documentação e transmissão da memória’, which they published in 2023 in Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi,

‘The Kamayurá Archive project was designed by leaders of the two main villages of the Kamayurá ethnic group in the Xingu Park, Mato Grosso, called Ypavu and Morená. We seek to complement knowledge of the history of the Kamayurá people and to develop new policies and strategies for safeguarding and transmitting knowledge for our future. This project is built on research carried out by an indigenous team and extensive discussion within the Kamayurá community. The first stage of the research, carried out in 2019, consisted of visiting researchers who have been working with the Kamayurá since the 1960s and memory institutions, to learn about historical records, how they were made and used, and how they are preserved.’
(Kamaiurá, Kamayurá, 2023: 1)

Continuing this productive collaboration between the Kamayurá Archive project, the NME and the InDigit team, the next steps to be taken are:

The collaborative creation of a prototype digital repository for the NME collection, from the perspective of the Kamayurá people.
The joint drafting of a manual with recommendations from the Kamayurá on the management of their people’s collections, both in physical and digital formats.
The publication of a collaborative reflection paper on the project.

In conclusion, this work not only demonstrates the importance of ethnographic museums and the collections they preserve for the communities of origin today, but also illustrates how these institutions can renew and reinvent themselves through these intersections of experiences.