Amazonia: The Rights of Nature is an exhibition at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) curated by Nuno Porto displaying Amazonian Indigenous feather works, ceramics, basketry, textiles, ceremonial dress etc. On MOA’s website, it states that this exhibit aims at “challenging visitors to examine their own notions toward holistic well-being”. While walking through the exhibit and admiring the various objects, I saw this exhibit not only as an educational resource for the public but also as a wakeup call to the Western world to pay more attention to the silenced voices of the Amazonian Indigenous people.

The exhibition focuses not only on the Indigenous tribes of the Amazon, but also the effects and burdens the Western world has caused for such tribes. Prior to the arrival of settlers, Indigenous tribes had lived in the Amazon for thousands of years, dependent on the forest for their well-being and survival (MOA). With the arrival of Europeans came slavery and disease which took millions of Indigenous lives. In recent times, the West has once again encroached onto Indigenous land: illegal logging (which has resulted in deforestation at an astonishing rate), various oil and gas projects, rubber industries and most recently, climate change. Such activity have displaced a multitude of Indigenous people. For example, the building of various dams have many Indigenous people protesting as they have seen the effects (the eradication of poor neighborhoods without a second thought). Such actions by the West have been in successful in silencing the voices of the Indigenous people, making it near impossible for them (the Indigenous people) to retaliate.

This type of silencing by the West is reflected in the six feather works that the Royal British Columbia Museum donated to MOA. The plaque accompanying these pieces say that “they arrived with almost no information and no reference to their origin” and that such lack of information is “deeply colonial” and “a way of silencing the people who made and used them, of excluding them from the conversation”. In his article “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence, Rodney G.S Carter discusses how archives are responsible for “the continuing existence of of the physical traces produced by members of society in their activities” as well as being “keepers of a society’s collective record of the past” (220). Museums, like archive, are keepers responsible for preserving information about different people and their cultures, values, traditions etc. By receiving these pieces with no information on their origins, MOA is deprived of valuable information. Such deprivation is demonstration of power and dominance by the West, a way for “these powerful groups [to]… use their power to define the shape an archives take” (Carter 217). However, by putting these objects on display, the museum is acknowledging that there is a silence and there is something missing. We, the public, must also realize that power has been exerted over these marginalized groups and, as Carter states,  “investigate, interrogate, and attempt to understand the contexts that gave rise to the silences” (230).

Last term, I took Introduction to Cultural Anthropology with Professor Wade Davis. Throughout the course, Professor Davis always emphasized that “anthropology allows us to look around our own world and see more deeply” and that  “every culture has something to say and each deserves to be heard”. If we continue our ways of enforcing power over marginalized groups, we risk the eventual eradication of these groups from societal memory and history. Although we may not have the power or resources to physically combat against such forces, the first and perhaps most important thing we can do is find and listen to the voices of the silenced because only then can we begin to bring their stories to light. 

Works Cited

Davis, Wade. “Century of the Wind.” UBC, Vancouver. 29 Nov. 2017. Lecture.

Elkaim, Aaron Vincent. “Amazon Tribes Stand Up for Their Survival.” National Geographic. N.p., 23 June 2017. Web. 19 Jan. 2018.

Porto, Nuno. Amazonia: The Rights of Nature. 10 Mar. 2017 – 18 Feb. 2018, Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, BC.