After spending the first days of June studying collections at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Dresden, the Waiwai delegation of the Heritage and Territoriality project traveled to our very own BASA museum. Their stay at Bonn had as objectives not only to continue their investigation of material culture, but also share some of their previous and current research experiences with staff and students of the BASA and Uni-Bonn Master’s program in Latin American Anthropology. Over several days Jaime Xamen Wai Wai (master in Archaeology), Alexandre Aniceto de Souza (master in Anthropology), Carlos Yapoxi Martins Soares Santos (a specialist and great producer of Waiwai material culture), Igor Morais Mariano Rodrigues (professor at the UFOPA university in Brazil) and Leandro Matthews Cascon (postdoctoral researcher of the Heritage and Territoriality project) studied objects of the Waiwai and neighboring Peoples, collected seventy years ago by Manfred Rauschert.
Alongside discussing these musealized objects regarding their own material culture, the Waiwai delegation contributed in other museological aspects to the BASA collection. For example, they discussed how a depot’s environment can help preserve certain physical aspects, but at the expense of other characteristics, not only material but also physical. Through their suggestions, punctual yet significant changes were made to the curatorship of certain items of the collection, and the sound of chanting, rattles and flutes filled the lowest room of the BASA museum, bringing (in the words of the Waiwai) more joy and fulfillment to the things and their intrinsic spirits that are housed in that deposit.
On their final day at the BASA, Igor Morais Mariano Rodrigues, Jaime Xamen Wai and Alexandre Aniceto de Souza presented a talk as part of BASA’s Master Kolloquium conference series. Named "Patrimonio y materialidad: diálogos sobre conocimientos antiguos y actuales por y con los Wai Wai", their presentation discussed Waiwai history and culture under anthropological and archaeological perspectives, based on the three lecturer’s previous Masters and Doctoral research and also on their recent experiences at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Dresden and the Basa Museum in Bonn. After a stimulating round of questions at the end of the presentation, the delegation said their goodbyes to BASA staff and students and made their way to their final scheduled museum destination, in Gothenburg.