Ancient complex societies of Upper Amazonia, the Shuar Federation, Museum Collections, and tzantza repatriation
The Shuar, known colonially as the Jívaro (“savage,” in Quechua) “headshrinkers,” live today in south Ecuadorian and north Peruvian Amazonia. In 1964, with the support of the Salesian Mission, they created the Interprovincial Federation of Shuar Centers (FICSH for its acronym in Spanish). FICSH was the first federation of its type in South America, setting a governance precedent that eventually led to the creation of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA for its acronym in Spanish): a pan-Amazonian level indigenous institution. FICSH is headquartered in Sucúa, a peaceful small town of circa 10,000 inhabitants that is well-integrated into the regional transportation network of the country (four hours from Cuenca and six from Quito, the capital city of Ecuador). It manages 830,000 hectares of rainforest and constitutes a system of 410 Shuar communities organized into 49 associations. FICSH has a centrally located urban block, where its administrative buildings are implanted, additional urban plots, and a peripheral landholding of 50 hectares which used to lodge the Kiim Training Center (Centro de Formación KIIM), currently ruined for lack of funding, as is most of the Shuar urban infrastructure. Sucúa lies in the Upano valley, a key archaeological region since the National Institute of Patrimony (INP for its acronym in Spanish) found with Lidar traces of a regional and quite unique agrourban system whose oldest remains span at least 2,500 years. Archaeological research in this region began with the work of Ecuadorian archaeologist Pedro Porras Garcés in the 1970s. The largest Shuar community outside of Ecuador lives and works in New Haven, CT.
Course description
David Tankamash, current President of FICSH, was contacted by the Denver Art Museum. Its collection includes six tzantzas, which now the museum wishes to return to their place of origin. When museum representatives spoke with President Tankamash, they acknowledged that a ritual would need to be enacted as part of the process of returning the tzantzas to the Shuar. They offered to fund the costs of travel for a Shuar commission to lead the (human remains) repatriation process. President Tankamash was thankful for their generous offer, but responded that the FICSH was not ready to be the custodian of the tzantzas. Where would they be placed? Which past conflicts would they reawaken? The Denver Art Museum responded they could support the development of a Tribal Museum. Museums, though, are not akin to Shuar traditions. In the past, tzantzas were placed in the jea, the house of a Shuar warrior.
This seminar proposes to engage with the complexities of transnational repatriation processes through a critical and historical perspective of the museum and its collections. In order to address the challenging questions that this case study poses, we first develop a literature review of Shuar deep history and contemporary diversity. Shuar culture has been extensively researched and interpreted by anthropologists, ethnographers, ethnohistorians, archaeologists, and others. In decolonial spirit, we will collaborate with the FICSH, Shuar intellectuals, and Shuar migrants in New Haven in a review of the “tzantza museum,” asking questions such as what this type of cultural institution may mean for the contemporary, plurinational, and cosmopolitan Shuar. We will co-conceptualize, through texts and drawings, the typology of the “museum” as repatriation raises the question of what this may be in an ideally post-extractivist context of self-determination and autonomy. Through a series of conversations (on-line and in person), readings, and guest lectures, we will delve into the questions posed in this brief, and with those bound to emerge from diverse interactions. We will also pursue archival research related to the history of Upper Amazonia and peruse the Peabody Museum’s collection, which also holds five or six tzantzas from the territory which is Ecuador today. Finally, we will visit the Hall of South American Peoples of the American Museum of Natural History and discuss how communities can be brought together with museographers, designers, and other constituencies to create the cultural spaces of self-representation.