Redescubriendo museos con líderes y lideresas del pueblo indígena ka’apor: diálogos y experiencias interculturales en museos de Brasil y Países Bajos

Abstract

The intercultural experience of “rediscovering” museums in Brazil and the Netherlands through dialogues between leaders of the ka’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 the 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 allows indigenous peoples 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.