Digital repatriation of biocultural collections: connecting scientific and indigenous communities of knowledge in Amazonia
It seeks to develop a more inclusive way of curatorial practice, enriching the data and promoting the dynamism and ongoing creation of digital biocultural heritage. Linking the biocultural collections amassed by 19th-century botanist Richard Spruce (held by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and British Museum in London) with those collected in the early twentieth century by German ethnologist Koch-Grünberg (held by the Ethnological Museum in Berlin), together with the knowledge of the source communities from which the collections originated, the project aims to reanimate the artefacts, rendering them into sources of inspiration for the making of new artefacts, which will be donated to Brazil’s National Museum in 2020.
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This project is part of a broader research programme on the Richard Spruce collections developed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Birkbeck, University of London since 2015. Its partners include the British Museum, the Berlin Ethnological Museum, the Brazilian Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA), the Rio de Janeiro Botanic Garden and the Federation of Rio Negro Indigenous Organization (FOIRN). Advancing methods of co-curatorship, the project is developing protocols for digital access to these biocultural heritage materials, which will be documented in a targeted policy report. The practical, local, community-driven solutions we aim to achieve with this project will provide material for reflection on the ethical and practical implications of digitally repatriating collections more generally, and of making the collections available for all.
Publications related to women’s and maternal health with Wixárika communities by the author of this exhibition
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2013)
Shame as a barrier to health seeking among indigenous Huichol migrant labourers: An interpretive approach of the “violence continuum” and “authoritative knowledge”
Social Science and Medicine 97 75-81
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2023)
Wixárika Practices of Medical Syncretism: An Ontological Proposal for Health in the Anthropocene
Medical Anthropology Theory 10 (2) 1-26
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2020)
“You see, we women, we can’t talk, we can’t have an opinion…”. The coloniality of gender and childbirth practices in Indigenous Wixárika families
Social Science and Medicine 252, 112912
Jennie Gamlin and David Osrin (2020)
Preventable infant deaths, lone births and lack of registration in Mexican indigenous communities: health care services and the afterlife of colonialism
Ethnicity and Health 25 (7)
Jennie Gamlin and Seth Holmes (2018)
Preventable perinatal deaths in indigenous Wixárika communities: an ethnographic study of pregnancy, childbirth and structural violence BMC
Pregnancy and Childbirth 18 (Article number 243) 2018
Gamlin, Jennie B. and Sarah J Hawkes (2015)
Pregnancy and birth in an Indigenous Huichol community: from structural violence to structural policy responses
Culture, health and sexuality 17 (1)