Biocultural knowledge, power and poetics in South American featherwork.

这个博士项目的重点是由土著人民的羽毛制成的南美物体，或与羽毛连接，在皮特河流博物馆（PRM）的收藏。羽毛装饰品是由羽毛的特定颜色、大小和形状、鸟类在特定文化中受到的不同程度的尊重、它们被使用的场合（宗教、萨满或民间）、它们被佩戴的地方等相关的象征意义的特定组合而产生的（Escobar 2007）。人类学家梅特劳（Métraux，1944）说：“南美洲印第安文化的一个显著特征是羽毛被广泛用于身体装饰以及身体和其他物品的装饰。”他继续说：“没有任何地方的羽毛比那里更奢侈，更有技巧。“然而，当游客凝视PRM中的羽毛制品展示时，可能会惊叹于物体的形式和颜色的多样性，特定人工制品，民族和地方之间的众多联系仍然隐藏;游客无法辨别和追踪特定物体的历史，意义和地理（Gosden和Larson 2007）。探索PRM收藏中的南美羽毛制品，这个跨学科，基于实践的博士项目将寻求开发讲述特定对象历史的方法，这些对象不仅揭示了该领域收藏的历史过程和博物馆中对象的“生活”，而且还涉及当代关于土著文化身份，主权和遗产权利的辩论（Françozo 2012），以及土著人民，鸟类和环境之间的动态关系。该项目旨在使人们了解这些带有羽毛的物体是历史上的生物文化物体，从而提供讲述生物多样性出现的历史的方式。正如Tsing（2012）所指出的，“植物和动物是人类干扰机制的一部分;它们有着被污染的历史。“这个项目很及时。近年来，南美洲生物文化多样性的丧失速度明显加快，卫星图像显示，猛烈的大火吞噬了该大陆的森林和稀树草原。虽然火灾在该地区是惯例，但“异常严重的火灾规模相当于政府的直接干预”，特别是在巴西和玻利维亚（Laurence 2019），他们支持农业综合企业，采矿和水电大型项目，损害了全球重要的生物多样性，土著文化遗产和领土权利。在当前的土著抵抗运动中，羽毛制品与面部彩绘和音乐一起被用作增强权能的工具。展示机构以土著身份为基础，这种自我表现将博物馆商店中的物品置于当今土著抵抗运动的中心。调查PRM的羽毛物品，相关档案和摄影收藏（如哥伦比亚的Moser和Tayler's，巴西的Rivière's和Posey's），该项目将与土著人民合作，一个选定的案例研究，作为PRM策展干预的基础，旨在赋予土著群体权力，展示他们捍卫自然世界的方式，并确保可持续的生活方式。波西的工作在这里特别相关，因为他对民族生物学的生物伦理学的研究和对土著知识产权的支持。同样重要的是奥黛丽·巴特·科尔森的物品收藏，因为她支持土著人民争取土地权。

The focus of this doctoral project is on South American objects made by Indigenous peoples out of feathers, or with feathers attached, in the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) collections. Feathered ornaments result from specific combinations of symbolic meanings associated with feathers' particular colours, sizes and shapes, the different degrees that birds are esteemed by particular cultures, the occasions on which they are used (religious, shamanic or civil), the place they are worn, etc. (Escobar 2007). 'A striking feature of the Indian cultures of South America' - said the anthropologist Métraux (1944) - 'is the extensive use of feathers both for body ornaments and for decorations of bodies and other artifacts'. And he continued: 'Nowhere have feathers been worked more lavishly or with greater skill than there.'Yet while visitors gazing at the featherwork displays in the PRM might marvel at the sheer variety of objects' forms and colours, the multitude of links between particular artefacts, peoples and places remain hidden; visitors are unable to discern and trace specific object histories, meanings and geographies (Gosden and Larson 2007). Exploring South American featherwork in the PRM collections, this interdisciplinary, practice-based doctoral project will seek to develop ways of telling histories of specific objects that shed light not only on the historical processes of collection in the field and the 'lives' of the objects in the museum, but also on contemporary debates on Indigenous cultural identity, sovereignty and heritage rights (Françozo 2012), as well as the dynamic relationships among Indigenous peoples, birds, and environments. The project aims to provide understanding of these feathered objects as historical biocultural objects, which afford ways of telling the histories in which biodiversity emerges. As Tsing (2012) argues, 'plants and animals are part of a human disturbance regime; they have a contaminated history.'This project is timely. The loss of biocultural diversity in South America has accelerated significantly in recent years, with satellite images showing fierce fires engulfing the heart of the continent's forests and savanna. Although fires are customary in the region, 'the unusually severe scale of fires corresponded to direct government encouragement', specifically in Brazil and Bolivia (Laurence 2019), who favour agribusiness, mining, and hydroelectric megaprojects in detriment of the globally significant richness of biodiversity, Indigenous cultural heritage and territorial rights. In current Indigenous resistance movements, feathered artefacts, alongside face paint and music, are being used as tools for empowerment. Showing agency grounded in Indigenous identity, this self-representation places objects held in museum stores central to present day Indigenous resistance movements.Investigating the PRM's feathered objects, associated archives and photographic collections (such as Moser and Tayler's in Colombia, Rivière's in Surinam and Posey's in Brazil), the project will develop, in collaboration with Indigenous peoples, a selected case study as the basis of curatorial interventions inthe PRM, aiming at empowering Indigenous groups, showcasing their ways of defending the natural world and securing a sustainable way of lifegiving. Posey's work is of particular relevance here, given his research on the bioethics of ethnobiology and support for Indigenous intellectual property rights. Also important is the object collection of Audrey Butt Colson, for her support of the Indigenous peoples' fight for land rights.