The Kamayurá Archive project: research, documentation, and the transmission of memory

Abstract

The Kamayurá Archive project was created by the leaders of the Kamayurá people’s two main villages in the Xingu Indigenous Park (Mato Gross, Brazil), Ypavu and Morená. The goal is to enhance our knowledge of the history of our people and develop new policies and strategies for safeguarding and transmitting traditional knowledge for our future. The project involves research by an indigenous team and discussions with the community. The first phase of our research in 2019 comprised visits to researchers who have been working with the Kamayurá people since the 1960s, visits to memory institutions, and examination of historical documents to determine how they were made and cared for. In this article we share what we learned and the questions and new plans resulting from these experiences.

Keywords
Indigenous archives; Indigenous heritage; Indigenous research; Traditional knowledge