Museums, ethnographic collections and social identity: reflections on the curatorship shared with the sateré mawé in a university museum in the city of Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil

Abstract

This work presents an experience carried out with the Sateré Mawé people in the identification and qualification of indigenous artifacts seized by the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Resources, and which are under the custody of the Amazon Museum belonging to the Federal University of Amazonas. The dialogue between indigenous people and the museum is based on the idea of collaborative museology, centered on the symmetrical relationship in which the relationship between indigenous people and objects identified as belonging to their culture is described. As a methodological resource, six “memory workshops” were held, when the artifacts were presented to indigenous people who described the objects, their uses and names in their own language. We chose to initially outline some aspects and concepts that are mobilized in the research, such as ethnic identity, collaborative museology and the context of museums in Brazil with ethnographic collections. Secondly, we present details of the process for reflection on how identity manifests itself in the experience of collaborative museology with the Sateré-Mawé people in the aforementioned museum. The observation was carried out during the workshops, held within the scope of the Amazon Museum with sateré mawé coming from four communities located in the metropolitan region of Manaus.