The Beautiful and the Political in Things: reflections on the relationship between the Mebengokré-Kayapó and German museums

Abstract

There is an indirect relationship between some German ethnological museums and the Mebengokré-Kayapó through the museum collections. The indigenous people, on the other hand, want a direct and close relationship, which would enable them to get to know the collection and receive museum curators in their villages. This latter relationship is treated in this article as a direct relationship, which exists only in potential. The aim of this analysis is therefore to understand and reflect on what the Mebengokré-Kayapó want from these relationships. This contribution is based on archival research in Germany and nine months of ethnography with the Mebengokré-Kayapó between 2021 and 2023. When they came into contact with photographs of the collections, the Mebengokré-Kayapó made aesthetic considerations and evaluations about them, which reveal their own conceptions of what a collection is and what a museum is. I argue that in order to understand what kind of relationship they want to have with German institutions, it is essential to take into account their political and kinship relations. Finally, from the indigenous perspective, museums should look like villages, become an aldeia-museum, so that they can use museum spaces to produce, confirm and expand their political and kinship relations.