Mapping Indigenous Histories: Collaboration, Cultural Heritage, and Conservation in the Amazon

This essay examines issues of collaboration in archaeology, particularly questions of engagement with indigenous communities in research and the incorporation of indigenous voices in contemporary debates regarding the future of the Amazon. I discuss how archaeology in collaboration with indigenous peoples over the past two decades in the Upper Xingu region of southern Amazonia (Brazil) simultaneously contributes to local interests, general anthropological interest, and broader global questions of tropical forest regions and their indigenous peoples. In particular, one of the archaeologist's principal skills, mapping things in time and space, is an important tool for participatory research and language for intercultural collaboration.

Dialogue and Collaboration

Collaboration begins with dialogue. It involves diversity and difference in perspective and, therefore, depends on mutual understanding and respect. Dialogue is implicit in anthropology in the diverse relations across subfields and with other disciplines, rooted in the holistic approach of North American anthropology. Holistic anthropology implies more than an interdisciplinary approach but recognizes the multi-scalar and multi-vocal dimensions of knowledge production. Anthropologists are trained to deal with diversity of perspective, often based on long-term residence in foreign cultural and social settings. More recently, engaged or collaborative anthropology advocates more

Fig. 1.

The Upper Xingu region in the southern Brazilian Amazon, showing the Xingu Indigenous Park (PIX) and Kuikuro territory (open circle). Note modern agro-pastoral development in forested areas surrounding the PIX (hatched line represents ecological transition between tropical forest areas and upland scrub forest). Inset: Location of Upper Xingu in South America.

inclusive strategies to knowledge production, including diverse publics and local participation (Lassiter 2005; Rappaport 2008).

Over the past two decades collaboration with indigenous communities has also become a major theme in archaeological studies, particularly in North America (e.g., Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2007a; Dongoske et al. 2000; Eiselt 2009; Ferguson 1996; Nicholas and Andrews 1997; Swidler et al. 1997; Watkins 2000). Among anthropologists, archaeologists are "herd animals," particularly accustomed to working in collaborative, interdisciplinary teams as research generally requires large field teams, analyses by diverse specialists, and perspectives from both natural and social sciences. The shift from working on or among indigenous peoples to working with them is less well established in the global south (see, e.g., Green et al. 2003; Meskell and Masuku van Damme 2007; Schmidt and Patterson 1996; Smith and Jackson 2007; Smith and Wobst 2005; Thorley 2002). In tropical forest areas, collaboration involves complex questions of multi-cultural dialogue, international partnerships, and more global questions of conservation and development.

This article focuses on research conducted in the Upper Xingu region (Mato Grosso, Brazil), situated in the southern margins of the Amazon basin tropical forest, an area hard hit by contemporary development (figure 1). Diverse Xinguano peoples live in a large indigenous area, the Xingu Indigenous Park (Parque Indígena do Xingu, or PIX), which was the first demarcated indigenous reserve in Brazil. Discussion is based on archaeological research, particularly participatory mapping of prehistoric and historic settlements, conducted with the Kuikuro community, a subgroup of the Xinguano nation, over the course of two years of residence between 1993 and 2007 (Heckenberger 2005, 2007).

Archaeological Engagements

Archaeological research in the Brazilian Amazon involves several levels of primary engagement, each with unique logistical-bureaucratic and practical-and social issues and relations: (1) foreign scientific interests, primarily U.S. and European, which include diverse publics, such as funding agencies, academic bodies, and broader public awareness; (2) national scientific interests, with overlapping but also distinctive and equally varied publics; (3) diverse government regulatory agencies; (4) pan-regional and international indigenous interest groups; and (5) local indigenous peoples, publics without which there is no such thing as a collaborative "field." Engagements within and between these domains of research are dynamic and complex, but the focus here is on the last set of relations mentioned, interaction between archaeology and indigenous peoples.

Archaeology in the Amazon, as in many parts of the Americas and tropical forest regions worldwide, involves working in or near indigenous areas. In the Brazilian Amazon, demarcated...