A Munduruku Headdress
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Objects in museum collections can be productively explored as repositories of environmental knowledge situated within particular cultural practices and ontologies. Research on a distinctive Munduruku headdress with its crown of golden feathers produced by tapirage—a remarkable Indigenous practice of changing the color of feathers on living parrots—opened up new ways of thinking about the intertwined relations between natural history specimens and artifacts, and between nature and culture. A comparative investigation of the headdress's materiality, construction, history, and use highlights its transformative potential, while providing insights into museum practice, international networks of exchange, and the fragmented and dispersed nature of “museum evidence.” The knowledge and power imbedded in museum collections can be reactivated through multidisciplinary research and collaboration with Indigenous knowledge holders.
Source: Museum Worlds
Author: Anita Herle
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4407515037