Territories of the Pataxó retaking: reconstructing the Pataxó Indigenous Museum of Coroa Vermelha (Bahia, Brazil)

Projeto de pesquisa apresentado ao Engaged Research Grant da Wenner-Gren foudantion

This research aims to continue the collaboration initiated in 2021 with the Pataxó indigenous people around the reconstruction of the Pataxó Museum of the Coroa Vermelha Indigenous Territory (Porto Seguro, Bahia, Brazil). The museum was built in the late 1990s to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the "Discovery" of Brazil. After the celebration of the event in 2000, the museum was abandoned by the authorities, with the exception of
the community itself that kept it open until 2018, when it closed its doors. Due to its affective appeal, the community decided to rebuild it and is doing so from other epistemological frameworks. After almost two years of collaboration, the museum's regulations were drawn up. Now the second stage of the project begins: to carry out curatorial research for the design of the museum's long-term exhibition and its assembly to reopen the museum. How do the Pataxó elaborate their self-narratives? What is the importance of these discourses of indigenous authorship for thinking about the territories of the Pataxó retaking? What lessons can be learned from this process?