The exhibition entitled “Amazonia: The Rights of Nature” was curated by Nuno Porto in an attempt to showcase the damage being done to both the environment and indigenous communities in South America. The exhibit features various cultural artifacts such as baskets, feather works, weapons and textiles with descriptions of how they are made and the purpose they serve. As expressed by the title of the exhibit, Porto highlights the importance of environmental protection as a means of preserving indigenous culture and respecting their history. Porto presents the dominant ideologies present within these marginalized communities in contrast with those found in the west through a series of confronting statistics that articulate the implications of consumerist practices such as cattle ranching, mining and logging.
For me, cattle ranching stood out as it was shown to be the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon and is a practice that disagrees entirely with Amazonian culture. Although meat consumption has historically been practiced by Amazonian people, the exhibit provides insight into the hunting methods used and the ritual associated with it. An example of this is provided through the Yeba Masa people and their use of blowguns to kill animals for food and other resources (MOA). A blowgun is a weapon that is powered by a person’s breath in order to launch darts through a tube. Within Yeba Masa culture, hunting is an act that is closely associated with shamanism due to the supposed “transcendental relationship” that hunters have “with the spirits of the animals they hunt” (MOA). In this way, the relationship that is built between people and animals differs greatly from what is found in the developed world, as animals have become commodities bred for exploitation. The belief that animals and the world they inhabit have individual rights is maintained not only by the Yeba Masa tribe but by all Amazonian people. They have conceptualized the environment as “a living entity, part of a complex cosmological dynamic of exchanges between humans and non humans” (MOA). In this instance, the use of the word ‘exchange’ implies that because the land provides them with the resources they need to survive, they believe that they owe something in return.
The exhibition lends itself to a sociological interpretation as it deconstructs how and why certain structures dominate in society by providing seemingly trivial insight into everyday life through objects like the blowgun. The way in which indigenous people cultivate animal by products and the value system that they have attached to it, can be conceptualised through the social theory of idealism. Idealism refers to the belief that our ideas determine the kind of structures we create and how we experience the world. The anthropocentric and capitalist ideologies that dominate in developed countries condone exploitive and unsustainable practices that are deemed immoral by indigenous communities. Similarly, the concept of ‘habitus’ or the lens through which we see and understand the world, provides further insight into our differing lifestyles and opinions (245). Habitus forms as a result of our varied experiences and becomes an integral part of how we process information (245). The indifference we have towards environmental depletion is due largely to our physical distance from the damages we have caused whereas indigenous groups remain integrated within the natural world and therefore continue to place value on its preservation.
In conclusion, the “Amazonia: Rights of Nature” exhibition serves as a reminder for people in the developed world to consider the negative externalities that they impose on others through their extravagant and privileged lifestyles. The emphasis placed on environmental depletion throughout the exhibit is significant as it is representative of the decreased quality of life for all living things for both present and future generations.
Works cited:
Amazonia: The Rights of Nature. 10 Mar. 2017 – 18 Feb. 2018, Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.” Pp. 241-258 in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by J. G. Richardson. New York: Greenwood Press.
