- Used in rituals by the ancestors of the Indigenous Tupinambá people in Brazil, sacred capes made from bird feathers were lost in time and today survive only as museum pieces in Europe.
- Only 11 of these capes are known to exist today; one of them, held in Denmark, is set to be returned to Brazil.
- A key player in the negotiations to secure its return was Indigenous artist and activist Glicéria Tupinambá, who in 2020 started making these sacred capes once again.
- “The Tupinambá who made the original cape lived more than 400 years ago, so the first person to make it, to design this cape, [manifests themselves] through my hands,” she says of her painstaking work.
A central figure in many Indigenous systems is that of the Enchanted Ones, ancestral entities thought to connect the earthly world and the spiritual world. Some of these contacts are said to occur through dreams, liturgies or dances. For Glicéria Tupinambá, an Indigenous artist and activist from Brazil, it was a dream in 2006 that she says set her on the path she’s now on.
She tells of hearing a call from the Enchanted Ones to rescue a feather cape, more than 400 years old, that belonged to her people. The piece in question sat in the storage vault of a prominent French museum, so it wouldn’t be possible to bring it back to Brazil. But there was another way to go.
“In 2018, during a visit to the Quai Branly Museum’s storage in Paris, I had access to the cape, and the cape spoke to me,” Glicéria tells Mongabay. “[It] showed this dimension where women’s hands make the cape. Women bear their own cape. From then on, I started making a cape in 2020 for Chief Babau — a cape authorized by the Enchanted Ones.”
That first cape, for Babau Tupinambá, her brother and the chief of the Serra do Padeiro village in Bahia state, represents for Glicéria not just the renewal of ancestral Indigenous cosmology and the tradition of sacred garments, but also a new perspective on belonging and on Indigenous peoples’ identity and struggle to preserve their culture.
Just 11 Tupinambá sacred capes formerly used in rituals have survived over the centuries, all of them preserved in European museums. Most date back to the 16th century, although there’s no consensus on precise dates.
The most famous, and best-preserved, of these capes is an elaborate piece made with the feathers of the scarlet ibis (Eudocimus ruber), a bird of a spectacular red hue that’s known in the Tupi-Guarani language as guará. The cape measures around 1.8 meters (6 feet) long and is currently in the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. It dates back to 1689, according to records.
In July 2023, the museum announced it would return the cape to Brazil, to be held in Brazil’s National Museum, as part of efforts to help rebuild the latter’s collection after it was gutted in a fire in 2018. Indigenous activists including Glicéria Tupinambá were key in negotiating its return, with the help of the Brazilian Embassy in Copenhagen. (The National Museum of Denmark still holds four other Tupinambá capes in storage.)
Even before this announcement, Glicéria said she was inspired by yet another call from the Enchanted Ones. “In 2021, we managed to make another cape with a different design: a woman’s cape. It relates more strongly to the presence of the women who wore that cape [in the past],” she says.
The following year, under a project approved by Funarte, the Brazilian government’s foundation for the arts, the piece traveled the country, exhibited in cities from Brasília and Porto Seguro, before returning to the Glicéria and Babau’s home village in the Tupinambá de Olivença Indigenous Territory, in the municipality of Buerarema.
The traveling cape
This second cape made by Glicéria was also exhibited in São Paulo in the second half of 2023, showcased at establishments such as the Casa do Povo museum, the Moreira Salles Institute, and the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. It even remained for a few days in the Jaraguá Indigenous Territory, home to an Indigenous Guarani community, in the north of the city.
At the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), Glicéria’s cape was part of the group exhibition “Indigenous Stories,” the museum’s largest-ever event to showcase works by representatives of Indigenous peoples from all over the world.
For Edson Kayapó, assistant curator of Indigenous art at MASP, Glicéria’s cape was a milestone as it transcended the world of art and formed a direct link to Indigenous ancestry.
“The Tupinambá cape is a very important element of culture as it was made by our ancestors. In the case of Glicéria’s cape, a dialogue with time takes place,” he said, adding that the artist “assumes that the cape renews Indigenous tradition.”
“The work is produced by current art techniques that dialogue directly with ancestry and the very production of that art at the time, probably the 16th or 17th centuries,” Edson added.
Glicéria agreed: “Some people see [the cape] as art, but we see it as an ancestor, and it speaks of something, it shows its presence. The Tupinambá who made the original cape lived more than 400 years ago, so the first person to make it, to design this cape, [manifests themselves] through my hands. The cape comes from this collective place, this cosmotechnique,” she said.
Glicéria’s second cape is made with the feathers of chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese, but also more exotic native and non-native species such as the chachalaca (Ortalis spp.), lesser riflebird (Lophorina victoriae), blacksmith thrush (Turdus subalaris), rufous-bellied thrush (Turdus rufiventris), great black hawk (Buteogallus urubitinga) and macaws.
“It’s not about one person; it has a whole complexity related to the territory,” Glicéria said. “It’s related to nature, space, the donation of feathers, children, women, young people, the entire community. It’s a thought that goes beyond art, so the idea is to have a debate, to let people think about what this place means for the memory of the Tupinambá people.”
It’s been almost two decades since Glicéria said she first heard the call of the Enchanted Ones in 2006, in which time she’s created both Chief Babau’s cape and the female cape. In the meantime, discussions about the Tupinambá territory have advanced and Glicéria has become one of the most active voices in the fight for the rights of Indigenous peoples.
The new Tupinambá cape continued its journey around Brazil until early December 2023, and is now returning to the village to prepare for a new journey. Glicéria says that in April, the piece will go to the Venice Biennale, Europe’s largest art event, whose 60th edition pays tribute to Brazil. As it travels between continents, making the same Atlantic crossing that previous capes made hundreds of years earlier, a dialogue with the past and the reconstruction of the present and ancestral future are established.
Banner image of a sacred Tupinambá cape in a scene from When the Cape Speaks and What the Cape Says, a film by Glicéria Tupinambá and Alexandre Mortagua.
This story was reported by Mongabay’s Brazil team and first published here on our Brazil site on Jan. 17, 2024.