Collections management policy: university museum, indigenous curatorship and collaborative process

Abstract

Museums are imbued with a colonialist heritage that is analyzed via theoretical and methodological  models of social sciences and humanities. This paper thus discusses how university museums can propose new parameters through collaborative action. The discussion focuses on collection management, the “space” where institutional policies meet, dealing with the curatorship of the exhibition “Resistência já! Fortalecimento e união das culturas indígenas – Kaingang, Guarani Nhandewa e Terena” (Resistance
now! Strengthening and uniting indigenous cultures – Kaingang, Guarani Nhandewa and Terena), which promoted indigenous understanding about the university museum, self-representation and the intent of donating contemporary objects. The chosen environment is the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology (USP) and the actors are the Kaingang, Guarani Nhandewa and Terena from the Indigenous Lands Araribá, Icatu and Vanuíre, in São Paulo. We present indigenous expectations in musealization in order to reflect on the role of the university museum in the production of preservationist meanings and the motivations for donation, placing heritage and
legacy side by side. Likewise, we verify how the museum sees representation and self-representation, and how it incorporates new processes in the face of policies and procedures to be restructured. The debate continues on the 
anthropological and museological aspects that structure new thoughts and possibilities on the praxis for museums.