The objects of the Asurini do Xingu in the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at the São Paulo Universi ty (MAE/USP): Collaborative curatorship of an ethnographic collection

• Grant number: 24/05692-2
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: December 01, 2024
• End date: November 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Indigenous Ethnology
• Principal Investigator: Fabíola Andréa Silva
• Grantee: Fabíola Andréa Silva
• Host Institution: Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia (MAE). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Fernando Orphão de Carvalho
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/22419-8 - Activities of analysis and documentation of the objects from the Asurini do Xingu ethnographic collection., BP.TT

Abstract

This research project aim carrying out a collaborative curatorship of the collection of objects from the Asurini do Xingu indigenous people. The collection has been under the custody of the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo (MAE/USP), since 2021. This curatorship will consist of the identification and requalification (analysis, documentation and preservation) of Asurini objects (ceramics, braids, weapons, utensils and tools, body adornments, feathers), based on a dynamic of collaboration between indigenous people, researchers and museum professionals. The objective of this curatorship is to highlight the importance of dialogue between museums, researchers and indigenous peoples to implement participatory management of the cultural assets of these groups at the museums. This proposal allign with the debate on the indigenization of museums, which deals with the leading role of indigenous peoples in the management of their cultural assets in museums and, also, the consolidation of a decolonial museological ethics that is highly committed to the visibility, the democratization of access and the recognition of the belonging, for the original peoples, of the collections that are under the custody of museums. This research aims to understand how this ethnographic collection can enter into the cultural dynamics of the Asurini do Xingu people, at the (re)production and transmission of their traditional knowledge and at the (re)production of their identity, at this moment in their historical trajectory. At the same time, it seeks to understand how, in this specific case, the museum can assume a place of self-representation and indigenous counter-narrative in relation to a neocolonial persistence, in the structure of museums. (AU)