Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to demonstrate, from the ethnographic objects that indigenous knowledge, linked to the objects, disappear in the whole musealization and patrimonialization process. The text debates also the central elements in the museological documentation in the museums.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to discuss questions relating to ethnographic objects, the indigenous knowledge, the things of the "enchanted" who are non-human beings with whom shamans communicate, to the artifacts of the ancestors. The reflection focuses on objects from the upper Rio Negro region that have always been a source of interest for researchers in the field of ethnology, but also museology and for specialists in the material and immaterial cultures of indigenous peoples.

In general, all these ethnographic objects are to be taken as elements of a much broader understanding of the world linked to the social and political organization as well as to very specific knowledge, common to all peoples, even to all clans. of this vast region of northwestern Amazonia. This is particularly the case for objects of a ritual nature, it being understood that the different dimensions of a shamanic object can only be perceived within the corresponding cosmological model. In the regional social and political context.

The creation of the indigenous museum by Amerindians reflects, in a combined way, the challenges of theoretical training combined with applied training, at the interface between anthropology and museology. The study of ethnographic objects and collections, as well as that of Indigenous museums increasingly require an interdisciplinary dialogue. Culture takes on a central dimension in the understanding of the different languages developed by individuals and social groups. In particular, it requires a deeper understanding of the ethnographic materials exhibited in museum collections and of the new forms of collecting developed with indigenous populations.