Redescubriendo museos con el pueblo indígena Ka’apor: diálogos y experiencias interculturales

Abstract

The intercultural experience of “rediscovering” museums in Brazil and the Netherlands through dialogues between leaders of the A’apor indigenous people and non-indigenous researchers of Latin American origin working in Brazil and the Netherlands stimulated co-theorizing exercises on ka’apor indigenous knowledge (ukwaha mupitaha) and anthropological, ethnobotanical and museological knowledge produced in museum and university institutions in these national contexts. As a result of this exercise, we highlight the ka’apor understanding of the territory and the forest as a “living museum”, as a place that enables indigenous people to create, reproduce and “save” their knowledge, an argument that reinforces the importance of protecting the territory and the forest for the preservation of indigenous knowledge and life. We reflect on how museums can be privileged spaces for the creation of intercultural knowledge.