Vol. 4 (2023): Esferas
SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Reflections on the Tsantsas Project:: rethinking Shuar object collections at a national y international level

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María Patricia Ordóñez Álvarez
Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador
español español
Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador
Maria de Lourdes Torres
Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador
Portada del artículo "Reflexiones en torno al Proyecto Tsantsas: repensando las colecciones de objetos shuar a nivel nacional e internacional"
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18272/esferas.v4i.2818

Published 2023-04-06

Keywords

  • human remains,
  • collecting,
  • collaborative,
  • Shuar,
  • museums

How to Cite

Ordóñez Álvarez, M. P. ., español, español, & Torres, M. de L. (2023). Reflections on the Tsantsas Project:: rethinking Shuar object collections at a national y international level. Esferas, 4, 70–93. https://doi.org/10.18272/esferas.v4i.2818

Copyright (c) 2023 María Patricia Ordóñez Álvarez, Consuelo Fernández-Salvador, Maria de Lourdes Torres

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This article presents the work carried out within the Tsantsas project: rethinking collections of Shuar objects; focusing on the joint engagement between academia, museums, public institutions and the Shuar community. Framed around three key objectives of the United Nations 2030 planning, this project initiated in 2017 and whose first phase culminated in December 2019 has managed, through interdisciplinarity y concerted work with communities, to demonstrate the importance of collaborative and inclusive work in the development of research projects. This article also seeks to address the different narratives and debates that arise around research and work with human remains in museum contexts, whether they are exhibited or not. By approaching the historical conceptions, many of them nowadays problematic, with which these human remains have been presented from ethnography, history, archaeology and biology, and therefore within their respective narratives, we also explore the consequences that such interpretations have had on the reappropriation of the heritage of ancestral communities, especially when the trade or illicit trafficking of these cultural goods has separated them from ritual contexts for their commodification and exhibition. This paper will present some of the initial findings of the project, including digital medical images, and the feasibility of DNA analysis of these remains.

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