Located on the UBC campus, the Museum of Anthropology is accessible to all UBC students, yet stepping into the Amazonian exhibit felt like entering a completely different world. Dim lights, a soundtrack of Indigenous languages playing in the background, and a woman peacefully napping in a hammock cultivated an environment distinct from the hustle and bustle of campus. After wandering through the exhibit, I turned a corner and saw a display of two small wooden dolls, one male and one female, the last objects a visitor to the exhibit sees.
Due to the normalcy of dolls, I didn’t expect to see them showcased in a museum exhibit but instead pictured them in the hands of a child. Upon closer examination, however, I realized the dolls represented a worldview I’d never encountered before. Women of the Shipibo group, an Indigenous population living along the Ucayali River in the Peruvian Amazon, carve these dolls out of wood and make kéne (designs) visible as a representation of both beauty and health (Porto). Unlike the popular Barbie dolls I played with as a child, the Shipibo dolls represent everyone, not just a white, blonde, and skinny female. The American Psychiatric Association has shown that Barbie dolls are associated with body dissatisfaction and eating disorders but on the other hand, the Shipibo women make their dolls with the intention of showing that healthy bodies are beautiful bodies (Porto). Through this difference in meaning, I can start to see contrasting ideals.
As mentioned above, the dolls portray the Shipibo people’s worldview through its kéne. The Shipibo believe that all things bear a specific design and that everything shares a strong connection to nature. Despite this worldview and perhaps due to an ignorance of its existence, many different groups continue to destroy the Shipibo people’s strong connection to nature. For example, the oil industry has currently assigned 84% of Peru’s surface area to oil production, the land on which the Shipibo reside and thrive (Porto).
This process of colonizers taking over Indigenous people’s lands is not an unfamiliar concept in history. In “The Imperial Background,” a text I read for my Geography class, Harris discusses the British settler colonies and their treatment of Indigenous land and peoples in British Columbia. Harris points out that the colonists saw the Natives as “savages” and regarded any harm they did towards the Natives’ land as a “civilizing mission” (7). Maybe the situation happening to the Shipibo population is history repeating itself. Maybe the oil industries see the Shipibo people as unequal beings. It is, in my opinion, reasonable to suggest these assumptions.
By contrasting the Shipibo dolls with the Western Barbie dolls and developing a better understanding of the Shipibo worldview and ideals, I now realize the significance of displaying an object as ordinary as a doll. Despite the progression of history so far, perhaps it is time to realize that Barbie dolls have room for improvement and so do the Western ideals that lead to the destruction of someone’s home.
Works Cited
“Barbies, Self-Image and Eating Disorders.” American Psychiatric Association, 25 Feb. 2016, www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/apa-blog/2016/02/barbies-self-image-and-eating-disorders. Accessed 18 Jan. 2015.
Harris, Cole. “The Imperial Background.” Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002, pp. 1-16.
Porto, Nuno. Amazonia: The Rights of Nature. 10 Mar. 2017 – 18 Feb. 2018, Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, BC.