- A French publisher has pushed back plans to publish a book containing drawings made by Indigenous Kadiwéu women in Brazil and gifted to French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss in 1935.
- The move followed widespread criticism that the Kadiwéu people were never consulted about the project, given the importance of drawings in their culture.
- While negotiations are now underway to ensure their participation, the incident has revived the long-running debate about copyright and the erasure of Indigenous artistic expressions.
- The Kadiwéu’s graphics, used in body painting and ceramics, are one of the most representative traditions of their culture; their main guardians are women, who now use this art as to both earn income and keep traditions alive.
One of the main observers of the art of the Kadiwéu, an Indigenous people from South America, was French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. In the early 20th century, he visited Indigenous villages in what is today Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state and photographed the inhabitants’ traditional ceramics and elaborate body paintings made with ink from the genipap fruit.
The guardians of this rich artistic tradition are the women of the Ejiwajegi people, as the Kadiwéu call themselves, who preserve their cultural memory while also generating an income from their creations.
Like other Indigenous peoples throughout Brazil, the Kadiwéu have for centuries suffered from colonial exploitation. And the most recent manifestation of this centered around their art: A book featuring the never-before-seen art of their ancestors was about to be published half a world away, and no one had thought to consult them about it.
In 1935, in the Indigenous village of Nalike, near what’s now the village of Alves de Barros in the municipality of Porto Murtinho, Claude Lévi-Strauss stayed with the Kadiwéu and received several drawings as gifts from the Indigenous women.
These artworks remained in the anthropologist’s personal archive for decades, until his wife, Monique Lévi-Strauss, found the folder containing more than 30 original drawings. French publisher Éditions du Seuil took an interest in the works and prepared to publish a new book around them: Peintures caduveo — Suppléments à Tristes Tropiques (“Caduveo Paintings — Supplement to Tristes Tropiques”). It would be released to commemorate Lévi-Strauss’s 1955 classic Tristes Tropiques (“Sad Tropics”), which gained international prominence for its relevant structural analyses of Brazilian Indigenous peoples.
The problem was that no one consulted the Kadiwéu themselves before embarking on the project.
They only found out about it by chance, when a researcher mentioned that the publisher was having a prelaunch promotion of the book on its website, at 21 euros, or $22, ahead of the launch in Paris in November. In response, the Kadiwéu mobilized Indigenous leaders, researchers and anthropologists, and wrote an open letter addressed that sought to expand the debate around the recognition and appreciation of their culture and identity. The publication of the drawings raised pertinent questions about who benefits from the sales of reproductions of these works of art.
“The material and immaterial cultural heritage of Ejiwajegi/Kadiwéu women must be respected as collective intellectual property, and due authorization from the community is imperative for its use,” the letter says.
It reached Le Seuil, which contacted a Kadiwéu representative and subsequently decided to suspend the book’s launch and sales indefinitely. The link to the book has been removed from the publisher’s site, and negotiations are currently underway for the Indigenous people to participate in the work.
Speech as a place of experience
Indigenous rights activists say the lack of prior consultation by Le Seuil shows disregard for the voices and rights of Indigenous peoples, illustrating how their art is often treated as an exotic object without due consideration for the profound cultural meaning it carries. When books are published without the artists’ consent and Indigenous peoples’ involvement, the authenticity of the narrative is compromised, perpetuating native peoples’ invisibility and silencing, activists say.
“This is a crucial demand that reflects the ongoing struggle of indigenous peoples to value their cultures,” says Benilda Vergílio, a Kadiwéu designer, fashion stylist and anthropology postgraduate student at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS). “The intellectual property of graphics, drawings and paintings is an extension of the Kadiwéu’s collective identity and memory, and it is vital that this cultural heritage be respected and protected. Prior consultation is a right guaranteed by Brazil’s Constitution and must be respected in projects involving Indigenous culture. It is essential that indigenous communities’ voices be considered fairly and authentically.”
Vergílio says her people aren’t interested in the money from the sales of the book, but rather in the inclusion of Indigenous people in its conception.
The open letter reads, in part, “We, the Ejiwajegi Kadiwéu people, who are descendants of the women who made the drawings given to Lévi-Strauss, were shocked by the lack of dialogue with our people during this process. At no time were we consulted about our opinions regarding this publication.”
It adds, “Considering that these drawings are part of the heritage of the Ejiwajegi Kadiwéu and are the fruit of knowledge passed down from generation to generation, we believe that our views are essential for launching a publication about these drawings.”
For Kadiwéu anthropologist Gilberto Pires, it’s “horrifying” to realize that, in the 21st century, there are still people who don’t care about Indigenous narratives, especially the memory of their ancestors — something that should be a source of pride for all Brazilians, as it’s part of the country’s history. Unfortunately, he says, this isn’t the case.
“Perhaps we are less important to the Brazilian state,” Pires says. “We should play a larger role in the construction of opinions, and the surrounding society should disassociate itself from the old image of schools from the past, which taught that, in order to be Indigenous, you had to wear a loincloth and a feather on the back of your neck, and make that ridiculous little scream. We need to teach about the importance of Indigenous people to the construction of Brazil. They fought against several invaders who wanted to occupy the country by any means necessary. Until the consolidation, the soldiers used to be Indigenous people.”
Vergílio says the sense of indignation and emotion when recalling the memories of her ancestors is understandable. It evokes the pain of loss and the importance of these people to the history of the Kadiwéu. It’s a moment of reflection about and celebration of their lives, even in the face of injustices such as the present one. When asked whether the book project perpetuates cultural appropriation, she says the mobilization of external voices on behalf of Indigenous communities can distort the stories and silence legitimate actors. “The fight for autonomy and fair representation is essential to appreciate and preserve Indigenous cultures,” Vergílio says.
Art and identity
This is only the latest instance of Indigenous peoples in Brazil facing the appropriation and disrespect of their cultural, intellectual and artistic production. But as anthropologist and Federal University of Mato Grosso professor Maria Raquel Duran points out, the country’s colonial history of Indigenous erasure, theft and usufruct without the participation of those involved have made such practices commonplace in interactions with the various Indigenous and ethnic groups living in Brazil.
According to Duran, the Ejiwajegi spoke out assertively in their letter against the use of their art for the benefit of non-Indigenous people, without due recognition, compensation or proceed-sharing.
“This practice, which is common in the context of Indigenous art in general, both in Brazil and internationally, creates outrage precisely because it uses these cultural expressions and knowledge as if they had no owners, as if they were in the public domain and did not require authorization from the artists, because they are not registered under narrow Western knowledge regimes such as cultural heritage or copyright,” she said. “Even though they are not part of that logic, Indigenous knowledge and practices have owners; and what Indigenous peoples like the Ejiwajegi want is more respect for their artistic and cultural expressions.”
Duran says that what we’re seeing is the repetition of an outdated colonial pattern that affects not only the Indigenous people in question but also the anthropology produced in Brazil. She emphasizes the need for Indigenous people and their supporters to take a stand against these occurrences, so that they cease.
“When Michel Pastoureau, the author of the afterword, states that the drawings allow readers to ‘let ourselves be carried away by the ineffable dreamlike power of the signs — misunderstood, secret, silent, they stealthily lead the researcher to this other part of the world,’ he shows that he is not familiar with Brazilian scientific production in this area,” she says.
Duran adds the way society interacts with Indigenous art and knowledge must change in order to respect and value these cultures.
Colonial mustiness
Gabriela Freire, an anthropologist at the University of São Paulo (USP), was the one who alerted the Kadiwéu about the upcoming French publication. Her doctoral research covers the history of the creation of museum collections of Ejiwajegi/Kadiwéu artifacts, especially during the first half of the 20th century. She says the graphics have always drawn the attention of Europeans, both for their originality and beauty and for the fact that they could be applied to a wide variety of media, from human skin to animal hides, and from musical instruments to ceramics, among others.
In 1935, when Lévi-Strauss and his then-wife, Dina Dreyfus, visited the Ejiwajegi, they introduced a new approach to the practice of recording artwork: they asked the women themselves to draw them on dozens of sheets of paper, so that no detail would be lost and these drawings could be compared later.
“Unfortunately, although the Ejiwajegi women themselves created the graphics that were kept by the researchers, not much information was recorded regarding who they were or their names,” Freire says.
“In a way, these records of the graphics requested by the European couple are witnesses to both the history of Ejiwajegi and the history of anthropology, as they document, on the one hand, Indigenous artistic practices and, on the other, practices of anthropological documentation and research.”
Freire says the presence of these graphics in a book that only focuses on one side — the perspective of European anthropologists — without consulting the Indigenous people shows the imbalance in the power relations between non-Indigenous researchers and native peoples.
“Most of the time, it is the anthropologists who make decisions about Indigenous peoples and their practices, while the latter are rarely consulted about the actions of the former,” she says.
Freire says an extractivist dynamic persists among many non-Indigenous researchers toward the knowledge of these peoples, one constructed not through dialogue but rather through appropriation.
In the current context, she says, institutions that hold Indigenous items have been increasingly required to establish a dialogue with the original populations. That was the case leading to the repatriation to Brazil in July this year of 583 Indigenous items from France’s Lille Museum. Given this precedent, she says, it’s unacceptable that a work with Kadiwéu graphics be published without due dialogue with the Kadiwéu themselves.
The case evokes another recent controversy: the repatriation, also this year, of a Tupinambá cloak that was part of the collection of the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. While the return of the piece was celebrated, it occurred without the direct involvement of the Tupinambá people, as had been planned.
Contacted by French broadcaster RFI for comment, Monique Lévi-Strauss, 98, described her feelings of frustration about the Kadiwéu drawings: “I’d like them to be published, otherwise God knows what will happen. Look, they are in my house, they could be lost, burned, stolen. So I thought the best way to preserve them would be to publish them. My husband had the greatest respect for the indigenous people of Brazil, and Tristes Tropiques shows that. No doubt he would have been very happy to see the drawings published.”
Mongabay sought comment from Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples but did not receive a response by the time this story was initially published.
Banner image: Kadiwéu women with body paint made from the genipap fruit. Image courtesy of Mariana Arndt.
This story was first published here in Portuguese on Dec. 9, 2024.
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