Xingu: Contacts

Just over five centuries have passed since Europeans arrived in Terra Brasilis, establishing the history of contact between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, and with this arrival came visual documentation. Explorers, travelers, missionaries, and the artists who accompanied colonial expeditions produced etchings, drawings and paintings, portraying the landscapes, inhabitants and costumes they encountered in the so-called “New” World.

This documentation reinforced stereotypes whilst boasting of the exuberant cultural diversity of the indigenous peoples of Brazil. The majority of these archives presented the people according to themes, but not as protagonists.

The National Museum of Indigenous Peoples, inaugurated in 1953 and custodian of this collection, consisted of an audiovisual exhibition room that included the archives of images produced by Marshal Rondon’s team.

In 1986, the Vídeo nas Aldeias Project provoked a change to this paradigm. Mastering control of cameras, indigenous people began to distribute their own images as instruments for the dissemination, valorization and cultural strengthening of communities. By denouncing the violation of their rights, this production has aided in the fight for demarcation and in defense of territories.

In continuity with this rich trajectory, the Museum, a scientific-cultural organ of the National Indigenous People Foundation (FUNAI), has announced the opening of the Goiânia Audiovisual Center, with a focus on training and the distribution of indigenous narratives via audiovisual media. The Center will provide indigenous peoples with access to training, the tools for creating and editing their own works, exhibition spaces to display their production, and opportunities to promote film festivals and showings.

Xingu: Contacts will be the inaugural exhibition at the Center, in partnership with the Instituto Moreira Salles and under the curatorship of indigenous filmmaker Takumã Kuikuro and journalist Guilherme Freitas. This exhibition forms a bridge between past and future, showing the history of audiovisual documentation in the Xingu Indigenous Territory and presenting contemporary indigenous audiovisual production as a counterpoint.

These films and photographs reveal the vision of indigenous filmmakers who have appropriated these tools in order to speak of their cosmology, their perceptions of the world, and about what identifies and singularizes them. Demarcated in history, therefore, are the names and territories that have yet to be recognized, approached now through the lens of indigenous protagonism: audiovisual production about indigenous peoples presented in the first person.

Joenia Wapichana, President of FUNAI

Xingu: indigenous perspectives

Xingu: contacts is an exhibition that takes as its starting point the anniversary of the first demarcation of an indigenous territory in Brazil, in 1961, in order to interrogate all of the history that led up to and followed this demarcation, as well as to change the point of view of the narratives that document it, be they visual, audiovisual or textual, that have contributed to our understanding in the present day. Giving expression to indigenous perspectives on the history of the Xingu is one of the primary objectives of this exhibition. The Instituto Moreira Salles preserves numerous photographs that portray the Xingu and its people, many of which have been produced by some of the most relevant names from the history of photography in Brazil. The work involved in the critical and decolonial reappraisal of the IMS collection is only just beginning and an emotional journey lies ahead.

In such a threatening moment for indigenous cultures in Brazil, this exhibition also draws attention to the extraordinary wealth and diversity of these cultures, expressing the urgency of a profound inversion of the predatory gaze that has victimized these people ever since initial colonial contact. This would not have been possible without the dialogue and contact established amongst the curators, Guilherme Freitas, author of the podcast Xingu: marked land, and Takumã Kuikuro, one of the most recognized indigenous filmmakers in Brazil and the world today, to whom we express our deep gratitude, extended in turn to all the artists and teams who have also participated.

It is an immense pleasure for the IMS to participate in the inauguration of the Centro Audiovisual do Museu dos Povos Indígenas, which has established itself as a reference for indigenous audiovisual production throughout Brazil. We also thank the Museum and the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples for the opportunity to present this exhibition in Goiânia, thereby making it more accessible to the people who inhabit the Xingu Territory.

We wish to direct special thanks to the Associação Terra Indígena do Xingu and to all of the peoples who inhabit the region today, contributing with their generosity, their wisdom and existences so that all of us can live in Brazil with great hope.

Board of the Instituto Moreira Salles

Audiovisual production is an extremely important tool for the peoples of the Xingu today, because it helps us to preserve everything that we have. Traditionally, our culture does not have writing with which to store the memory of the people, and with audiovisual production we are documenting and rescuing this memory. Each people has its own language, its own culture, and through the camera we can register how each one speaks their tongue, and how each one knows their history.

In the past, photographers came from outside, just as the Europeans did on expeditions. The Villas Bôas brothers brought photographers and filmmakers to the Xingu, with the idea of presenting indigenous cultures to the rest of Brazil. These old images are important to us. They show how we fought to demarcate our lands, and through them we are able to recognize this fight.

But today we are the protagonists of our story. Before we did not know of the audiovisual, now we do. We are the owners of our image and we are taking the fights of the peoples of the Xingu to museums, festivals, cinemas, social networks and exhibitions.

There was not just one contact between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Contact happens all the time, today and tomorrow, and it also happens through the audiovisual. We want to tell our story so that non-indigenous people can recognize and teach their children of the protagonism of the indigenous peoples of the Xingu and of all of Brazil.

Takumã Kuikuro, curator

The first indigenous territory to be demarcated in Brazil, in 1961, the Xingu is home to traditional populations who, for centuries, have faced forms of intervention and violence and who inspire the fight for the rights of original peoples. These movements have been accompanied by a profusion of images: from the records of traveling Europeans to the documents of expeditions undertaken by the Brazilian state, from extensive coverage in the press, to the revolution brought about in recent years by indigenous audiovisual production.

This exhibition proposes a revision of the history of these images, establishing dialogues between photographs and films produced by non-indigenous individuals from the 19th century, and the work of contemporary filmmakers, artists and communicators from the peoples of the Xingu and of other origins. This journey incorporates works commissioned by indigenous authors, material from public and private archives, and allusions to other conceptions of the image present in the culture of the Xingu such as graphic design and oral narratives.

Part of the history of the Xingu is documented in photographs in the care of the Instituto Moreira Salles. This exhibition marks the beginning of a process of reevaluating this collection of images in collaboration with indigenous researchers and leaders, by identifying the people, places and situations portrayed. We seek, therefore, to set this collection to work, encouraging critical reflection on the representation of original peoples in the history of this country and the development of new forms of indigenous self-representation.

Guilherme Freitas, curator

The borders between soya plantations and preserved forest form a dividing line around the Xingu Indigenous Territory. The image produced by Kamikia Kisêdjê in 2021 sums up everything at stake in defense of indigenous lands. In two decades of activity, this communicator and filmmaker has shown the cultural and natural exuberance of communities throughout the country. In recent years, he has dedicated his efforts to monitoring environmental crimes in the region.

Photographer, filmmaker, educator and activist, Kamikia Kisêdjê (1984) has been documenting the cultural and political activities of indigenous peoples throughout the country since the 2000s. He lives in the Khĩkatxi community in the Wawi Indigenous Land, on the border between the Xingu Indigenous Territory and farms in the municipality of Querência, Mato Grosso. Using drones, he monitors the deforestation and the pollution of the Suiá-Miçu River, which supplies the community.

Coordinated by filmmaker Takumã Kuikuro (1983), the Coletivo Kuikuro de Cinema was founded in 2002 with the National Museum of the UFRJ and Vídeo nas Aldeias. Based on the Ipatse community, in the Xingu Indigenous Territory, the project documents the daily life of the Kuikuro and has produced films that have received awards in Brazil and overseas, such as Itão Kue-gü – As hiper mulheres [Itão Kue-gü – The Hyperwomen], A febre da mata [Jungle Fever], awarded at the 12th Ecofalante Film Festival and the 24th International Festival of Environmental Cinema and Video (Fica), and Território pequi [Pequi Territory], winner of the 2023 Grand Prize for Brazilian Cinema in the short film category.

In demarcation campaign reports, the role of leaders from the Xingu tends to be underplayed. This omission is reflected in documents that survive from that time. Narru Kuikuro, Kanato Yawalapiti, Prepori Kaiabi, and many other people who were central to the negotiation between people of the Xingu and non-indigenous representatives, are rarely identified.

In recent years, more women have come to occupy spaces that had traditionally been reserved for men, cultivating their own approaches to leadership. The photographer Sitah has portrayed some of them here at the invitation of ATIX Woman, the branch of the association connected to the Xingu Women’s Movement.

Kujãesage Kaiabi (1992) lives in the Kwaryja community of the Kawaiweté people in the Xingu Indigenous Territory. Educated at the Instituto Catitu, she is a communicator of the Rede Xingu+ network and is a member of the Xingu Women’s Movement and the Rede Katahirine which maps the audiovisual production of indigenous women in Brazil. Currently, she coordinates a series of audiovisual workshops for Kawaiweté women and is working on a feature length documentary about her grandfather, Prepori Kaiabi, a leader recognized by all peoples in the territory.

Ever since the end of the 19th century, images produced by non-indigenous people have framed the way in which the peoples of the Xingu were seen in Brazil and the world. Here these images are confronted by works produced in recent times by indigenous authors who, in expressing their perspectives, reveal gaps, contradictions and the violence of historical representations.

Archives also have their gaps. Old images of indigenous peoples were archived with little or no information about the people, places and situations portrayed. And many of these records were never seen by those depicted.

The images gathered together here have gone through a process of identification with support from the Associação Terra Indígena do Xingu (ATIX) [Terra Indígena Xingu Association], which represents the 16 local ethnicities, of which ten are represented in this exhibition: Ikpeng, Kalapalo, Kamaiurá, Kawaiweté, Khisêtje, Kuikuro, Mehinako, Trumai, Waujá and Yawalapiti. Leaders of neighboring peoples were also consulted due to their historical links with the territory: Bakairi, Kayapó and Xavante.

Based on the information collected, updated captions have been created which will be continually updated as and when relevant details come to light. The requalification of the IMS archives continues beyond the lifetime of the exhibition, understood not as the conclusion of this process, but rather as the opening of a dialogue with the peoples portrayed.

The first known photographs of the people of the Xingu were taken in the 1880s and 1890s during German ethnological expeditions. In these images, which circulated in European books and reports, indigenous peoples are represented as exotic objects of study.

In the 1920s, the Rondon Commission captured the first moving images in the region. In the 1940s the Indian Protection Service (SPI) produced extensive documentation. In these images, an iconography of increasingly frequent contact was gradually constructed: tense first encounters, the delivery of clothes and objects, and the incorporation of indigenous peoples into the expeditions.

This iconography has been revisited by indigenous audiovisual production in films that show what the archive images do not reveal: the point of view of those being contacted. Here we have some examples from this production seen through the memories of the Xavante and Ikpeng peoples.

Ronuro, selvas do Xingu (1924) [Ronuro, wilds of the Xingu] is the oldest known film about the region, with images captured by Major Thomaz Reis, cameraman of the Rondon Commission. An example of propaganda that showed the integration of indigenous peoples into the national project, the work ends with a symbolic scene: a line of indigenous people of the Xingu being dressed in uniforms. And a banner announcing: “Soon we will have more of these workers in our society”.

Meanwhile, in Sangradouro, which takes its name from the community where it was produced, the filmmaker Divino Tserewahú returns to the newsreels that show the first systematic contact between the Xavante and non-indigenous people, in the 1940s.

These images were produced by the SPI during the March to the West, initiated by the Getúlio Vargas government in 1943 and supported by the discourse that the country’s interior had to be occupied. Many settlements were displaced or decimated.

While the newsreel celebrated this contact as a civilizational triumph, Divino describes it as the surrender of his people. The film shows the resistance of the Xavante and the strength of their culture.

An unprecedented victory, the area demarcated in 1961 was, however, far smaller than foreseen in original plans. It did not even cover the headwaters of the Xingu River. Entire communities were exposed to government construction projects and attacks from miners and farmers. In the years that followed the Villas Bôas brothers arranged the safe transfer of some of these populations to demarcated land.

This transposition saved lives, yet interfered dramatically in the everyday realities of these peoples, who had come from other cultural contexts. Years later, some of them, such as the Panará and the Khisêtjê, returned to their traditional territories. Others, such as the Ikpeng, did not. In the film Pirinop – Meu primeiro contato [My First Contact], they recall the impact of this change and contemplate the perspective of recovering their land.

Heralding the so-called Westward March, the Roncador-Xingu Expedition set off in 1943 to open roads, airstrips and electricity lines from the Center-West inland. The brothers from São Paulo, Cláudio, Orlando and Leonardo Villas Bôas enlisted as workers, in search of adventure, and went on to take command of the expedition.

Meeting with the peoples of the Upper Xingu opened the eyes of the Villas Bôas brothers to the urgent need to protect indigenous ways of life which were being threatened by the advancing expedition. In 1952, along with Darcy Ribeiro, Noel Nutels and others, they presented a plan for demarcation to president Getúlio Vargas.

The press, which followed the expedition from the beginning, was instrumental in this campaign. Spurred by a mix of journalistic flair, financial interest and pride, Assis Chateaubriand, owner of the Diários Associados newspaper group, used the most popular magazine at the time, O Cruzeiro, as a vehicle..

The magazine sent some of its leading photographers to the Xingu. Jean Manzon translated the discourse of absorbing indigenous peoples into the idea of a nation into images. José Medeiros and Henri Ballot captured details of the encounters and the culture shocks.

The representation of indigenous peoples in the press is a theme for Denilson Baniwa’s interventions. And communicators from the Rede Xingu+ share precisely what never used to make the news: the point of view of the people of the Xingu.

O Cruzeiro reported on the government expeditions to the Xingu, seen as a vast far-west, to be tamed by new bandeirantes who would bring civilization to the country’s wild interior. The best the indigenous population could hope for was to act as spear-carriers, as proposed in the caption for the José Medeiros’ classic photo: “The indian helps progress.”

The cruelest side of this coverage appears in the series about the marriage of Diacuí, a young Kalapalo, to the sertanista Ayres Câmara Cunha. Assis Chateaubriand himself arranged the ceremony at Candelária church in Rio de Janeiro. The magazine pursued the story excitedly for months, until Diacuí’s untimely death during childbirth.

There was still room in the magazine for other approaches. At the invitation of the Villas Bôas brothers, Henri Ballot and reporter Jorge Ferreira wrote detailed accounts of culture in the Xingu, which served as support for a public campaign calling for demarcation. In 1961, Ferreira became the first director of the Xingu Indigenous Park.

The Rede Xingu+ network consists of indigenous organizations, traditional community associations and civil society institutions throughout the entire floodplain of the Xingu River, in the states of Mato Grosso and Pará. One of their activities consists in training young indigenous communicators, with support from the Socio-environmental Institute. They document daily life in the communities, environmental destruction and political protest, disseminating images primarily through social media. In 2024, eight communicators from the Rede Xingu+ participated in the exhibition The Eyes of Xingu in Oslo, Norway, curated by Kujaesãge Kaiabi.

Kamatxi Ikpeng (1988) lives in the Moygu community, in the Xingu Indigenous Territory. He was one of the protagonists in the film Das crianças Ikpeng para o mundo (2001) [From the Ikpeng Children to the World] and has been working in the audiovisual field ever since. Trained at the Vídeo nas Aldeias workshops and by the Instituto Catitu, he has made films such as Tximna Yukunang Som – Recording Sound (2010) and Yarang Mamin – Yarang Women’s Movement (2019).

A pioneer in indigenous cinema in Brazil, Divino Tserewahú (1974) lives in the Sangradouro community of the Xavante people. He has collaborated with Vídeo nas Aldeias since the 1990s and participated in the first ever workshop in the Xingu. In films such as Wapté Mnhõnõ – Initiation of a Young Xavante (1999) and Tsõ'rehipãri – Sangradouro (2009), he documents the cultural practices of his people and the memories of contact with non-indigenous peoples.

Everyday life in the Xingu has been well documented ever since the campaign for demarcation. Journalists, filmmakers, artists and anthropologists have documented rituals and celebrations, graphic art and body painting, the architecture of houses, and the customs of their inhabitants.

In the 1950s, in extensive reports for O Cruzeiro, Henri Ballot presented images of traditional rituals in the Upper Xingu to the public for the very first time; the celebrations of Jawari and Kuarup: the ceremony that pays tribute to the dead.

After demarcation, the frequency of this documentation grew. Adrian Cowell and Jesco von Puttkamer produced documentaries accompanied by the Villas Bôas brothers in the 1960s. The following decade, Maureen Bisilliat captured images that are still strongly associated with the Xingu today.

The ethnographical leanings of this journalism are most clearly visible in images from the field work of anthropologists such as Robert L. Carneiro. And recent films by indigenous filmmakers capture the ritualistic dimension of life in these communities, while also contributing to their survival.

Born in England and a resident migrant in Brazil from 1950, Maureen Bisilliat had already traveled the country as a photojournalist when she was invited by Orlando Villas Bôas to produce a reportage in the Xingu in 1973. She would return several times over the course of a five year period.

A photobook emerged from these experiences, Xingu: território tribal (1978) [Xingu: Tribal Territory], and a film, Xingu/terra (1979) [Xingu/Land], revealing to the public the vitality of indigenous cultures in demarcated territory. Her friendship with cacique [chief] Aritana Yawalapiti was forged during this time and lasted until his death from covid-19 in 2020.

For this exhibition Maureen has selected a range of classic portraits, drawn from the monumental record she sought to create with the book, together with other previously unseen images, more intimate in tone. 

In 1984 the journalist Washington Novaes journeyed through various communities in the Xingu to produce the TV series Xingu, the magic land, which presented the region’s culture and nature to many Brazilians. In 2006, concerned about the attacks on indigenous territories and rights, he repeated the journey for a successful new series: Xingu, the threatened land.

Novaes’ work became a landmark in journalistic production related to indigenous peoples, due to the care with which it captures the transformations in the Xingu over three decades. Here we have brought together testimonies from Xingu leaders about the threats faced by their people. These declarations, conceded for the 2006 series, remain pertinent.

Produced by the BBC in 1961, the series The Destruction of the Indian, by Adrian Cowell, denounced the threats facing the people of the Amazon. In the episode on the Xingu, The Heart of the Forest, filmed shortly before demarcation, the director asks if traditional rituals and celebrations were destined to become extinct.

Anthropologist Robert L. Carneiro lived among the Kuikuro in the 1950s and 1970s. The photographs he took during his field research document deeply rooted cultural practices in detail, such as the healing ritual seen here.

In the documentary The Hyperwomen, anthropologist Carlos Fausto and filmmakers Takumã Kuikuro and Leonardo Sette show how the making of the film encouraged the Kuikuro to reestablish an ancient feminine ritual, the Yamurikumã.

Piratá Waurá (1987) lives in the Topepeweke community in the Xingu Indigenous Territory and has researched visual anthropology at the State University of Mato Grosso. In partnership with international organizations, he has recently been committed to documenting the fight of the Waujá people to protect the Kamukuwaká cave, a traditional site which has not been demarcated and which faces invasion and depredation.

In the final years of the dictatorship, when the indigenous movement had begun to gain momentum in Brazil, the Xingu established itself as the emblem of this fight. With two decades of demarcation behind them, the population in the territory had grown, and traditional ways of life had strengthened. At the beginning of the 1980s, protests in communities calling for rights drew attention across the country.

During redemocratization, the example of the Xingu was decisive in terms of a historical victory: for the first time, the 1988 Constitution included a chapter dedicated to indigenous rights. During the negotiations, Raoni Mẽtyktire and other leaders of the Xingu went to Brasilia to make their position clear. Present at those negotiations, writer and activist Ailton Krenak says that the Xingu inspired the demand for more demarcation: “It’s as if they said to us: ‘It can’t be anything less than this.’”

This inspiration continues until today, with the rise of a new generation of leaders, such as the Xingu women’s movement. And these fights are now being documented by communicators within the territories themselves, as is the case of filmmaker Kamikia Kisêdjê.

In 1983, in an attempt to claim support and resources from Funai, the Kawaiweté intercepted a plane at the Diauarum Post, located on the Lower Xingu. A symbol of the expeditions that had arrived in the Xingu four decades before, the airplane was taken by these indigenous people in order to send out a message: “Respect indigenous land!”

In 1984, the Kayapó blocked a road that the dictatorship had opened in their territory and prevented the ferry from crossing the river. As such they demanded the demarcation of the Capoto/Jarina Indigenous Territory, where they live until today. While sealing the agreement in Brasilia, Raoni pulled the ear of Mario Andeazza, general João Figueiredo’s Home Secretary. 

In 1989, at the 1st Encounter of Indigenous Peoples of the Xingu, in Altamira, Pará, Tuíra Kayapó used a machete to protest against a planned hydroelectric dam on the Xingu River. Constructed three decades later, Belo Monte Dam devastated the region and continues to be a focus for protests.

In the images created from the 1940s onwards, when the presence of photographers became more frequent in the Xingu, a scene played out repeatedly: the image of indigenous people with cameras. This gesture surfaced in a range of contexts - distrust, curiosity, relaxation - but with one constant: there were no records of images produced by indigenous people themselves.

This scenario began to change towards the end of the 20th century due to endeavors such as the Vídeo nas Aldeias project which offered audiovisual training to generations of indigenous people. During this period cameras also circulated thanks to the initiative of the Xingu people themselves who documented daily life in their communities.

Today the Xingu is one of the most significant centers for indigenous audiovisual production in Brazil, with an emphasis on documentary approaches. The commissioned films, on display throughout the exhibition, approach themes central to this production: preservation of memory and the recognition of cultural value, the struggle for rights, and environmental protection.