Contribution short abstract:

I present the case of the activist archive initiated by the German anthropologist Manfred Schäfer, who advocated for Amazon Indigenous peoples’ sustainable lifeways. It is argued that activist “collecting” was a co-production of archival materials and transcended the concept of “cultural rescue.”

Contribution long abstract:

For several reasons activist archives have not been recognized as “real archives”: They have not applied this term to their record-keeping activities and their personnel, who work part-time in self-determined ways without hierarchies and without receiving an income. On the other hand, for a long period of time these facilities effectively gathered materials that had been produced for a particular group, movement, or thematic focus. They therefore prove to be unique sources, while at the same time adopting an anticolonial position and advocating for the causes of marginalized peoples. The German anthropologist and activist Manfred Schäfer (1949-2003) systematically collected and disseminated texts, photographs, sound recordings and films concerning the land titling of Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Central Rainforest since the late 1970s. The private archive he initiated is the main source of recorded historical oratory, music, and dance of one Asháninka Nomatsiguenga community. I reflect on the methodological challenges of studying the activist archives that emerged in the transnational Peruvian-German setting to support the process of land titling Amazonian Indigenous communities and to stop settler land invasion as well as illegal resource extractivism. It is argued that the particularities and independence of the activist archival circuit can be traced to networks that like-minded stakeholders established and their innovative co-production and dissemination of materials. While collecting, they transcended the conventional anthropological concept of “cultural rescue.” I query how today such characteristics influence the reactivation of these specific archival materials in the communities where they were originally collected.