Iny Karajá Presence: Material and Visual Culture of Ritxoko Dolls in Museums

Abstract

Museums face the challenge of the lack of information on their museological documentation of ethnographic objects, specially those collected from indigenous peoples in an array of colonial and post‐colonial contexts. The PPK research project presented in this paper aims to contribute to the improvement of documentation on the Brazilian indigenous Iny Karajá dolls (ritxoko), which have been identified in museum collections around the world. This is most relevant to understudied collections in those museums expected to substantiate exhibitions, educational actions and other forms of access and communication of the collections to the public. In order to address the goal, the PPK project traces the dolls and the museums collections' trajectories, and targets at specifics such as the study of the dolls' clothing and body adornments. Participative research methodologies have proved to be critical as the interpersonal interfaces between researchers/institutions and Iny Karajá indigenous groups provides new data and a fresh understanding of the artifacts in the contexts of museum practices. The information has been organized in a database, which will be available at the digital Platform Tainacan. The usefulness of these findings to the museum field are to acknowledge and disseminate more accurately the Iny Karajá doll collections; to meet UNESCO's Recommendation on the Protection and Promotion of Museums and Collections (2015); and to account for ritxoko dress, seeking to discuss the place of indigenous artifacts at “ethnic” niches in museums.