Introduction – Metamuseology and museologies

Museology – Science or just practical museum work?

1This question underpinned the discussions held at the ICOFOM Annual Meeting in 1980. A group of renowned museum researchers and professionals could not imagine how this question would be discussed at the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century, 42 years later. At that time, Stránský, one of the leaders of the discussion, stated that the major issue was metatheoretical, i.e. museology meeting the criteria of scientific theory. Stránský addressed the issue based on the term museology (A) the idea of science (B) and on work as a practice (C).

“The above question can be answered in the following way: A is at the stage of detaching, i.e. becoming B. However, A is in no case identical or identifiable with C. A is in specific relation to C, but due to the fact that it is approaching B, it necessarily recedes from C. But the closer A is to B or the more they become identical, the more it will reapproach C, in other than the original plane, i.e. in the plane of theoretical interpretation.” (Stránský, 1980, p. 44)

2Despite the fact that ICOFOM discussions have evolved (and they have certainly evolved), museological theory has never ceased to be a topic of discussion and one of Stránský’s major contributions has been Metamuseology. Informed by theory, museology and museography continue to be discussed, thus updating the scientific, social and political circumstances involved in the effort.

3Some museum collections were gathered decades and centuries ago, among which the ethnographic collections consisting of indigenous peoples’ musealia. These objects were collected according to different criteria, as spoils of war, plunder, lootings and seizures of property, land grabs and expropriation of natural resources during colonization initiatives, and also by first settlers on land that would form national states, by travelers and during funded scientific expeditions. Moreover, collections are gathered from an anthropological standpoint in different times and under different visions. The museums that keep these collections face the contemporary challenge, according to the manner in which the collection was formed, of updating the museality concept behind these musealia through musealization.

4Many centuries or decades have passed, reasons, criteria and guidelines have been adopted and put aside, showing many faces of the colonialist modus operandi. Scientific views have also changed, requiring theoretical interpretations based on up-to-date museology parameters.

5This article is about the Kaingang collection gathered at Museu Paulista (São Paulo, Brazil) at the beginning of the 20th century that was transferred to the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo – São Paulo, Brazil (MAE-USP). The article is centered around the decolonial agenda by offering collections to contemporary interpretations. That means embracing the knowledge and wisdom of indigenous peoples and calling for the participation of the Kaingang people in museality and musealization.

6If Metamuseology is the theory required for museology to be science, theoretical interpretation in turn requires several museologies to give it its methodological foundations, i.e. intermuseologies. InterMuseologies, the concept that supports this article, is the intersection between theory and methodology required for experimental and interpretative research about ethnographic museums. We consider that Museological Communication is part of the theory with respect to the dialogical relations inherent in the indigenous peoples’ musealia, museality and the musealization process, including the relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous agents. Therefore, Museological Communication cuts across the different museologies, which will be presented below.

7Critical museology exposes hegemony, but also types of participation and the absence of discourse at museums (Lorente, 2011; Lorente, 2015), including the social and cultural cancellation, silencing and suppression of different groups, and the suppression of the author of the discourse who hides himself or herself in anonymity. Critical museology’s contribution consists of the manners in which the indigenous peoples’ musealia have been (de)contextualized and represented and of how collections formed in the past suppressed the indigenous peoples’ historical narratives at the ethnographic museums, but also, and particularly, of how self-representation plays an increasingly important role in museums.

8Social museology, within the theoretical framework of Latin America’s New Museology, supports the autonomy of groups and communities and promotes indigenous protagonism in the museum (Roca, 2019); in other words, the protagonism of indigenous people in controlling their lives, histories, memories, narratives and heritage, cultural affirmation within their own identity processes and political participation (Cury, 2020c). Indigenous museology is social museology with its own and new choices, criteria, logic, musealia, museality and musealization, in connection with an agenda of indigenous peoples’ fights and counter-hegemonic and decolonial processes. Social museology is at Indigenous museums, but also at ethnographic museums (Cury, 2020c).

9Collaborative museology is based on the collaboration method, processes developed between museum professionals and communities of interest, such as the indigenous peoples who had part of their heritage collected in the past at ethnographic museums. The items of these collections are objects made by their ancestors, but are part of their present. Under the collaborative museology approach, museums become the place where discussions and negotiations are held for the donation of contemporary collections formed by indigenous groups (Cury, 2021b; Cury, 2020b). Collaborative museology strikes a balance between common actions and common purposes of museums and indigenous groups that come into contact again and reinterpret their heritage, bringing it to their current lives and intergenerational cultural transmission processes. Collaborative museology is a methodological milestone for social museology to play a role in the ethnographic museum, but indigenous groups make use of it to establish their partnerships with indigenous museums (Cury, 2020c).

Musealia, museality and musealization

10This article discusses Metamuseology through a range of deployed and interconnected museologies, the InterMuseologies. A given reality is described, that of the Kaingang people in the state of São Paulo (Brazil) and of the collections formed in the past. The first issue to be addressed is the territory of the Kaingang in São Paulo, the colonization of the western part of São Paulo and the gathering of the Kaingang collections by Museu Paulista, subsequently added to the MAE-USP collections.

12The West of São Paulo, a vast territory where the Kaingang people had lived for a thousand years, according to archeological data, was a target of colonization initiatives and the expansion of coffee growing. Settlers started to arrive at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century, and they gathered around the fringes of the forest. At first there were no conflicts with the Kaingang people, who did not find the arrival of settlers a cause for concern (Ribeiro, 1988, p. 94). However, the settlers left the fringes and advanced through the forest, getting closer to Kaingang villages. “Instead of mere individual hunters, or groups of two or three hunters, large groups started to get into the sites where the Kaingang lived; they were the engineers in charge of surveying the region for the state and for private individuals who claimed tracts of forest land” (Ribeiro, 1988, p. 95). The first attack on surveyors occurred in 1905, followed by others.

“An inquiry committee set up to study the conflicts found that in all those attacks less than fifteen civilized people were killed. However, at the same time several mass killings were reported of the inhabitants of whole Kaingang villages, rekindling hate and leading to new reprisals.” (Ribeiro, 1988, p. 95)

13In the same period, more than 500 railway workers died from diseases, a fact that was covered and encouraged the portrayal of the indigenous people as “the major obstacle to continuing the construction of the railway and the opening of the farms, because of the hostility shown by the Coroados [Kaingang]” (Ribeiro, 1988, p. 95). Terror was a weapon used by both sides, but the indigenous people did not have plenty of guns and ammunition at their disposal.

“All people felt threatened; nobody ventured alone into the forest, certain that it would be filled with Indians; they never dropped their guns. People worked, ate and slept with their carbine within the reach of their hands.” (Ribeiro, 1988, p. 95)

15Estrada de Ferro Noroeste do Brasil (the Northwestern Railway of Brazil), a railway that connected the east (city of Santos) to the west (Corumbá) up to the border with Bolivia, “ran along the waterline between the Feio and the Tietê [rivers]” (Barbosa, 2019, p. 23) and went through Kaingang territory, “without causing conflicts. Railway workers saw many times indigenous people crossing the rail track in a peaceful, although fearful manner” (Ribeiro, 1988, p. 94). Despite that, and as explained before, the construction of the railway

“was a new source of hostilities; the raids of the bugreiros were followed by increasingly more violent assaults of the indigenous people against railway workers. Terror was widespread in the hinterlands, where nobody went without an automatic carbine discharged day and night randomly to scare off the “bugre”.” (Barbosa, 2019, p. 23)

16The engineers and surveyors mentioned above were part of the expeditions to the Feio or Aguapeí river (1905) and to the Do Peixe river (1906) sponsored by the Geographical and Geological Commission of the State of São Paulo (CGGSP). The work “had to be carried out at gunpoint.” (Barbosa, 2019, p. 23)

17The intensification of the attacks prompted the recently created Service for the Protection of Indigenous People (SPI) to make contact with the Kaingang by implementing a pacification plan. Questioning the use of the word “pacification” in relation to the Kaingang people is of key importance. After all, as argued in this article, the modus operandi of the colonization effort consisted of violence and killing. According to Barbosa, newspapers and books played a role in establishing a relationship between indigenous peoples and terror: “We, in the cities, have been reporting their killings and we continue to ignore the suffering inflicted on them” (2019, p. 18). For that reason, the idea that the Kaingang “are particularly ferocious, to the point of deserving no other treatment from the civilized people than their complete extermination – at gunshots” is false (Barbosa, 2019, p. 8). Pacification is a colonialist term that put the Kaingang people living in the state of São Paulo in an unfavorable, unfair, inhumane and deceitful position at the start of the 20th century.

18The intervention by the SPI in the west of São Paulo caused the Kaingang to be gathered (settled) in Ribeirão dos Patos in 1912. Afterwards, the Kaingang people were moved to the Vanuire Indigenous Land and to the Icatu Indigenous Land, where they remain to date.

19Museu Paulista was created in 1895 as a State Museum linked to the CGGSP (Meneses, 1994). The CCGSP made it possible to collect many musealia items by sponsoring expeditions. Collections were gathered with a high level of museality and integrated with Museu Paulista, leading to a musealization based on the modus operandi of the colonization effort. Several objects were also collected by CGGSP during the construction of the Estrada de Ferro Noroeste do Brasil (Northwestern Railway of Brazil) and by the SPI.

20Part of the history of the colonization of São Paulo’s Western region is materialized in the museum’s collections. In other words, the museality of the musealia items that we will address in this article occurs within the framework of colonialism, which was reinforced by musealization. This process is being revised according to the contribution made by InterMuseologies, which we exemplify below.

Musealities in document records

21Museological Documentation is part of applied museology, museography, and we cannot ignore its importance in musealization for the recording of the museality of musealia items.

22In the case of old collections, document records can be changed according to other museum models and interests. The course taken by the collection management policy is imprinted on the museological documentation. That was the case of the documentation about the Museu Paulista’s ethnographic collections formed until the end of the first half of the 20th century. They consist of several inventories (re)taken for decades, from the oldest to the most recent (Cury, 2021a; Cury, 2020a). These (new) preparations of documents require careful analysis, because each change may cause information loss and/or gain or a change in language (Cury, 2020a, p. 356). In such cases museality also changes. Many musealities are present in each record, inventory, catalog and catalog card, etc.

23Below is an analysis of the Kaingang musealia items, considering the several analyzed documents that show the musealities. To that end, we resort to InterMuseologies, highlighting the direct participation of the Kaingang people living in the Icatu and the Vanuíre Indigenous Lands in the effort to requalify the collections that they have inherited from their ancestors (Cury, 2021a; Cury, 2021b). It is important to highlight that, despite Kaingang's participation in Collaborative Museology, this article does not intend to expose indigenous narratives, but is based on them, on the wishes of the legitimate heirs of the musealia and on their political agendas regarding the role of museums. The presentation of the objects moves from the CGGSP to the Estrada de Ferro Noroeste do Brasil (Northwestern Railway of Brazil), the SPI for discussion.

24The expeditions organized by CGGSP mentioned here are those to the Feio, or Aguapeí, and Do Peixe rivers. The Kaingang elderly woman Ena Luisa de Campos explained to us that the river is “feio” (“ugly”) because of the Kaingang blood spilled on it.

– “Arrows of the Kaingang Indians of the Feio river. Offered by the Geographical and Geological Commission of São Paulo, and collected by the expedition made to the Feio river in 1905.” (Museu Paulista, 1914)

25Three arrows are displayed with the information about their donation and collection registered in the 1914 Museum Accession Book. In Inventory No. 7 (from 1932) one of the pieces is described as an “Arrow with an iron tip” (Museu Paulista, 1932). Despite the lower information content in Inventory No. 7 when compared with the 1914 Museum Accession Book, the record including the “iron tip” description shows a museal emphasis on the “technique, the industry and raw material”, according to the same principle applied by Roquette-Pinto in the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) (Carvalho, 2021, p. 5). Therefore, the two documents should be read in a complementary manner. On the other hand, the metal tip of the arrow is evidence of the contact between the Kaingang and non-indigenous people and of the adaptation of a metallic object to be used as an arrow tip for hunting and defense purposes. The track record of these objects uncovered to date has not yet shown any of these three arrows in the most recent documentation because of the changes in the pieces’ descriptions and control number. This impairs a new contextualization of the pieces, because it disconnects the information initially given about the arrows from the current number.

– “Skull of a sixty-year-old Kaingang Indian, a captain killed during the assault carried out by the Indians on July 31, 1906 . . . city of Baurú, São Paulo . . . Otto Dreher.” (Museu Paulista, 1914)

26The information about this human remain is in the 1914 Museum Accession Book. The description is clear about the dead Kaingang, the date, the city and collector who had a relationship with the director of Museu Paulista at the time, Hermann von Ihering, according to the 1904 Museu Paulista report (Ihering, 1907, pp. 4–5). However, one aspect is worth mentioning: the word “assault” that in this context means an attack by the Kaingang. Curiously, the attacks carried out by the non-indigenous people, such as the bugreiros, are referred to using another word, “raid”. This difference has been confirmed by the glossary prepared by publisher Juliano Meneghello, available in Barbosa (1914/2019). Below is an example of the different use:

• 3 In Portuguese, “assaltos” and “batidas”.

“To reinforce the impression of terror that is linked in the cities to the indigenous people, newspapers and books, which never fail to make detailed comments about the fierceness of their assaults, always remain absolutely silent about the raids that usually precede and cause the former, and which lead to the terrible massacre of whole populations.” (Barbosa, 2019, p. 17, author’s italics3)

27The mentioned captain, impossible for the museum to identify but who perhaps could be identified by a shaman in rituals, is allegedly a chieftain (rekakê) or group leader, whose skull, loaded with museality, became a “war trophy” when the chieftain was killed and musealized, and marked the victory of the settlers over the Kaingang. However, we should not declare the Kaingang’s defeat, because they exist and resist to date, transmitting their mother tongue and other traditions.

28About human remains in museums, kujã (shaman in the Kaingang language) Dirce Jorge Lipu Pereira teaches us, based on her group’s memories and her knowledge about spirituality, that:

“Regarding the digging of our remains, we also ask these researchers who come to make research about our ancestors to consider that they are not merely bones they are human beings. They are persons. Our ancestors have already suffered a lot and deserve our respect.” (Pereira & Melo, 2020, p. 32)

29Discussing the display of human remains in exhibitions, the kujá explains the following to us:

“I took part in an exhibition in São Paulo, and I was very sad when I saw the skull of an indigenous person on display. Gosh, I was really horrified when I saw that. That is why I said “what a lack of respect to our people”.” (Pereira & Melo, 2020, p. 33)

30The documentation of Museu Paulista shows that the ethnographic and archeological collections were separated in 1958. We believe that in that year the collections of human remains were also separated, because they do not appear in the same inventories and records. In this sense, there was a separation of human remains from the original collections.

– “War arc used by Kaingang Indians and found after the attack against the group on the Peixe river 23.IX.06 [September 23, 1906], offered by the Geographical and Geological Commission SP [of São Paulo].” (Museu Paulista, 1914)

31Arcs are weapons used for hunting, fishing and defense purposes, when necessary. This is the reason why one record has called our attention, when “war” and “attack” are associated with victims: the “group” that carried out the expedition to the Do Peixe river.

– “Pan of the Kaingang Indians, found by the group that carried out the expedition to the Do Peixe river on September 23, 1906, offered by the Geographical and Geological Commission SP [of São Paulo]” (Museu Paulista, 1914).

– “An iron-tipped arrow of the Kaingang Indians collected after the attack carried out in Araçatuba, a station of the Northwestern Railway of Brazil, against a group of agricultural workers, of whom six died, this arrow was offered to the Agriculture Department by Engineer Victor Lima [?] VIII [August] 1915” (Museu Paulista, 1914). Document No. 78 is a letter sent on August 25, 1915 by the State Department of Internal Affairs to the “Director of Museu Paulista” (MAE-USP, n.d.).

33The description reinforces the negative portrayal of the Kaingang people in São Paulo by weakening and victimizing the six “agricultural workers” killed during the indigenous attack in a place and on a date clearly identified, a description tool similar to that analyzed by Carvalho:

“The narrative in the Museum Accession Book focuses on the descriptive parts: on the correct date, on the well-described place, on the event, . . . on who carries out and who is the object of the action and on the appropriate collection. The words are very well chosen, so that records have an impact and become the key points of the narrative.” (Carvalho, 2021, pp. 24–25)

– “‘Cocron’ pan of the Kaingang people living on the margins of the Feio river, Vauhin tribe. Pacified on March 19, 1912, and offered to the Museum by the Inspectorate of the Service for the Protection of the Indigenous People in São Paulo” (Museu Paulista, 1914, RG 2566).

34Among so many descriptive details, the use of the Kaingang word “cocron” is worth mentioning, showing that the author of the description had some knowledge of the Kaingang people, and control/power over that people. On the other hand, the recording of Vauhin, the name of one of the several Kaingang chieftain (rekakê) who lived in the original territory and were settled in a single place before the creation of the Icatu and the Vanuíre Indigenous Lands. The name of Vauhin was only possible in this situation as a villager, that is, a situation of control and victory over an indigenous chief. The piece is contemporary with the “pacification”, a colonialist expression. That, as we have been saying, diverts attention from the violence inflicted on the Kaingang.

– “‘Curú’ or mantle of the Caingang Indians in the shape of a sleeveless shirt (Camisa sem manga) and made of fibers from wild urtica” (Museu Paulista, 1914, RG 3285).

35In Inventory No. 7 (1932) the textile is described as a “urtica fiber shirt” (Camisa). In another inventory taken in the 1950s, the piece is described as a “night shirt” (Camisolão) (Museu Paulista, 1950s). This is an example of the possibility of following the course of a piece over the years, without losing information, because changes have been minimal and the emphasis has been on the “technique, manufacturing and raw material” (Carvalho, 2021, p. 5). However, the meaning of the textile became known to José da Silva Barbosa de Campos (Zeca), a Kaingang who got to know the piece in 2016, when his mother Ena Luisa de Campos informed him that it was a midwife’s attire, a detail not known by the museum staff (Cury, 2021a, p. 29).

36José da Silva Barbosa de Campos and Kujã Dirce Jorge Lipu Pereira, both living in the Vanuíre Indigenous Land, gave their testimonies about the midwife’s attire, which became a part of the exhibition called Resistência Já! Fortalecimento e União das Culturas Indígenas Kaingang, Guarani Nhandewa and Terena (Resistance Now! Strengthening and Uniting Indigenous Kaingang, Guarani Nhandewa and Terena Cultures)”, Archeology and Ethnology Museum of the University of São Paulo (MAE-USP).

37In his testimony, Zeca recalled memories of his grandmother, Maria Cecilia de Campo, known by the name of Candire:

The Kujã [the midwife] had the same understanding as the shaman, she blessed people for protection. Because of that act, all children that were born were blessed. They believed so. Grandma [Candire] was a midwife, but she never wore [this cloth]. (Campos, José da Silva Barbosa de, Kaingang, lives in Vanuíre Indigenous Land, oral testimony, 2017)

38Kujã Dirce Jorge Lipu Pereira, who delivered five babies, gave her testimony:

“A midwife has a gift given by God. Helping a person give birth, bringing a child to life is a virtue, you become part of all that. When you help to bring a child to life he or she is your son or daughter. That is the way we consider them, our children. The first face the baby sees is that of the midwife, the first thing the baby feels is the midwife’s hands, she is a second mother. It is a great virtue and also a great emotion. This attire is sacred and can only be made by a Kujã.” (Pereira, Dirce Jorge Lipu, Kaingang, lives in Vanuíre Indigenous Land, oral testimony, 2018)

Final Considerations

39We assumed that Stránský, the pioneer of Metamuseology, could help us with his philosophical framework to think about the triad – musealia, museality and musealization – applied to the contexts and meanings of indigenous peoples’ collections, but in line with a decolonial agenda that focuses on the indigenous peoples assuming a leading role. If he were still with us and reflecting on musealization practices, his first effort would be to devise a theory from the standpoint of the “other”, a change in the point of view, shifting the museum’s and the musealia’s methodological locus to the indigenous peoples and their centuries-old political processes. It is this methodological locus that Museological Communication has been addressing currently, a shift of the museum to cultural settings that mediate man’s relationship with reality as the subject matter of museology.

40Based on the idea of InterMuseologies, the purpose of this article has been to explore the Kaingang collections gathered at the beginning of the 20th century during the colonization of the western part of the state of São Paulo. What determined the interpretation analyses about these musealia items was the concept of museality as part of the violent procedures used to collect and gather collections of objects that witness a relationship full of conflict, and the records loaded with past musealities that are included in the Museological Documentation. However, one element has key importance: the active participation of the Kaingang groups in the new contextualization and signification of the objects inherited from their ancestors and that they met again at MAE-USP.

41To that end, we have chosen some museological objects and, resorting to InterMusealities, we showed how musealization can be used to challenge the former musealities and to make new propositions while respecting the rights of indigenous people to musealization.

42Indigenous participation brings to the museum other epistemologies, which are new to professionals but millenary for indigenous peoples. This is a challenge for the museum – to recognize these thousand-year-old epistemologies that have resisted colonization, the passage of time and so many pressures from capitalism up to the present, as well as to get to know them without intending to understand them as if they were their own, which requires dialogue, respect, and ethics.

43We do not decolonize the museum, but museological thoughts and museography, which is why the Museological Documentation demands attention. Decolonization is a dynamic process that takes place in different forms: complementary, different, continuous, synchronic and diachronic. We do not decolonize all at once, from a single procedure and in the same way in different contexts and circumstances. There is a confrontation of a matrix of thought, but there are different forms of decolonization and modus operandi, because colonialism is itself diversified and must be dealt with locally, revealing relations of control that in the museum are expressed through museality and musealization.

44We do not offer any conclusions, rather new approaches that put museums in another scientific, social and educational position, in an ongoing dialogue with those groups that were forced in the past to distance themselves from their cultural heritage.

45Museological thinking and museum practices cannot be decolonized if the indigenous people are not only present in museums, but are also autonomous, playing a role far beyond that of mere consultants and proposing counter-hegemonical narratives. What we currently need at museums, as proposed by Lorente (2011), are challenging narratives instead of closed discourses; self-reflection, open and uncertain positions of museum discourses; transparency about authorship, i.e. uncovering of hidden voices – who speaks and where they speak from.