​“Heritage and Territoriality: Past, present and future perceptions among the Tacana, T'simane’, Mosetén and Waiwai”

In the summer of 2024, a delegation from the Tacana and Tsimane’ communities of the Bolivian Amazon region, together with researchers from the University of Bonn, visited the Weltkulturen Museum. The focus of the visit was an examination of a collection of objects of material culture that the ethnologist and then-curator for the Americas, Karin Hahn-Hissink, had gathered in the 1950s in the territories of the Tacana and Tsimane’.

The visit took place as part of the research project “Heritage and Territoriality: Past, present and future perceptions among the Tacana, T'simane’, Mosetén and Waiwai”, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and carried out at the University of Bonn under the direction of Prof. Dr. Carla Jaimes Betancourt. The project investigates the meanings of, and the diverse perspectives on, tangible and intangible cultural heritage among four Indigenous groups of the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazon.

The encounter at the Weltkulturen Museum provided the delegations with the opportunity to contextualize the collection for the first time from their own perspective and to relate it to current territorial and historical questions. At the same time, it opened a dialogue on future forms of collaboration, documentation, and community-based research.