Lost Objects, Hidden Stories: On the Ethnographic Collections Burned in the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

In this article, I take a close look at the objects collected over the last 200 years from the indigenous people of the Upper Rio Negro, northwest of the Brazilian Amazon, that were part of the ethnographic collection of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro. Examination of these objects allows us to explore the main characteristics of the ethnographic archive of the museum, as the Upper Rio Negro collections were connected to different topics associated with indigenous societies and histories in Brazil, including enslavement, forced displacement, religious conversion, and indigenous territorial, artifactual, and cultural knowledge. This article also highlights the professional commitment of Brazilian anthropology to amplifying indigenous voices over the course of the history of the discipline, and by doing so, it pays homage to the women and men whose work built the National Museum collections.