The Collection

The thing I was most curious about after agreeing to the project was to see the collection, albeit in digital photo form rather than in person. I had to wait for months and months before the research team in London was able to access the collection to photograph it, since the museum was locked down because of Covid-19 and summer turned into fall. In late November 2020 I finally received the dropbox folder containing the "boxes" with the collection items. I opened the "boxes" one by one and I see feather decorations, shell and seed necklaces, pipe heads, clay vessels, decorated gourds, leather clothing and much more. 

Box 12 Screenshot.

Some objects I can't identify, but later I find that many are described in Barbrooke Grubb's book An Unknown People in an Unknown Land. My first response is that I've seen similar objects in museums in Paraguay and in books and I experience a sense of familiarity. The objects are visually not entirely foreign to me. However, the culture they belong to or used to belong to is entirely foreign to me, even if similar objects are still used today by some indigenous groups in the Chaco where I grew up. How do I respond to something that is not mine, something I have no real personal connection with? How would I respond if I saw the objects in a museum? What if these objects were on display at the British Museum in an international context? What does it do to the objects to be taken from their original living context of being used in daily life, to be collected, boxed up, stored for decades? I feel a little uncomfortable with the task of the project at hand, but I want to take this opportunity and the challenge to continue to learn more about the peoples that I grew up to next to, their history, their reality (which is not usually portrayed in history books) on whose ancestral land I grew up in, and on all our shared colonial heritage. I am relieved that part of the response to the collection will come from indigenous artists themselves. 

Box 25 Screenshot.