Salesian Missions, Indigenous Identity, and Cultural Heritage: Navigating History, Memory, and Reconciliation in the Negro River Region

EPOCH
2 days ago
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Gustavo Crubellati Nunes | University of Padua

The Salesian presence is prominent throughout the Negro River region, extending from the Venezuelan and Colombian borders until close by Manaus. In a territory where the federal government was unrepresented until 1990, the Salesians and the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians managed education and health services. These institutions, along with the Salesians’ engagement with disadvantaged populations, are deeply embedded in the local populace's memory. In the twentieth century, the Salesian Missions undertook the protection of Indigenous heritage from external threats of the expanding rubber economy. This included housing a collection of Indigenous artefacts in the Museu do Índio, managed by Salesian priests, which housed around 3,000 artifacts from the Rio Negro communities to preserve cultural memories. Missions held, and continue to hold, profound significance in preserving Indigenous heritage, accompanied by a strong sense of obligation.

The establishment of an Indigenous Museum in Manaus was the initiative of Mother Madalena Mazzone. Initially, it occupied two classrooms at the Santa Teresinha Patronage and was named the Salesian Indigenous Museum. The process of rendering objects sacred and fetishized within museums often rests upon factors such as their authenticity, imposing presence, and public significance. This exhibition, however, demonstrates the great cultural value of simple, utilitarian, ‘every day’, and domestic objects, thereby affirming them as heritage. Although the proposal does not dispute or condemn the sanctioned heritage discourse, which institutionally validates and selects assets, the artifacts in the Museum are notably presented without the typical emphasis on grand, static monuments or official narratives, but instead, the exhibition highlights the vibrant, ongoing life of the culture.

The efforts to collect artifacts for cultural protection primarily traces back to the booming rubber economy of the early twentieth century. To move the rubber extraction in the region from the Upper Rio Negro to the Middle Solimões, the rubber industry focused on a drive for increased productivity at all costs. This caused an unsustainable level of extraction from the Amazon rainforests, and the forced migration of Indigenous communities to create space for industrial settlements. This led to the first notable intervention of the Salesian sisters in favour of the rights of the Indigenous people in the region, in which they carried out collections of artifacts with Indigenous leaders’ consent as an attempt to save the heritage of the Indigenous people, namely the Tucano people.

A black and white photograph of a white male with a long beard, and 11 shirtless and barefooted smiling children all holding a long piece of cloth on the earth floor. A building can be seen behind the group. — Salesian Missionary with a group of Tucano children, 1965. (Source: Antonio Giacone and Pietro Ambrosio. ‘Tra le Tribu del Rio Uaupés:(Amazzonia, Brasile).’ Pubblicazioni del CSSMS/Diari e memorie).

Decades later, in the 1970s, after the rubber economy decayed and in the context of the repressive military regime, the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) was founded - a Christian entity which still works to protect the Indigenous people’s rights on a national level. At the time CIMI acted mostly to guarantee basic human rights to these communities and later went on to act as a middleperson between the federal government, agricultural companies, and Indigenous tribes to demarcate Indigenous protected lands. Crucially, CIMI prompts the Church to face its past, admitting its substantial role in ethnocide via religious proselytization and forced labour systems that impacted Indigenous peoples across Brazil, notably in the Amazon around Manaus. By contrast, with the consolidation of the Rio Negro Indigenous movement from the 1980’s onwards, a robust reassertion of ethnic identities took hold. This responsibility arises in part from the Catholic Missions past alienation of these peoples from their own culture for proselytization, in part from their inadequate maintenance and uncontrolled dissemination of collections, and finally, as a moral imperative to protect vulnerable populations regardless of their spiritual adherence.

Recent methodological changes in cultural anthropology have given rise to new trends, including postcolonial perspectives and a critical reassessment of missionary ethnography and its collections. Ceremonial artifacts were seized, then either sold to museums or destroyed, and what remains is a history defined by hidden artifacts, the reasons for their concealment, and the continued exclusion of Indigenous people. When access to these items is prevented, their history is denied. Conversely, tracing the provenance of these objects is typically less challenging once they have been transferred from missionary organizations into the collections of secular museums. Additionally, these critics underscore the perceived obsolescence of missionary museums, citing their lack of a cohesive museological methodology and the subpar scholarly standards of their display records.

This followed a protracted history of severe oppression faced by Indigenous populations from religious missions, state authorities, and the powerful classes within both national and regional society. Their goal was to manage conflicts arising from Christian and Western civilizational processes. The historical engagement of the Salesian Sisters of Dom Bosco, the Italian missionaries and their Catholic institution, with Indigenous peoples has been challenging, and the Indigenous Museum is an example of this, as it has been founded and continuously managed by the order. From the seventeenth century onwards, the Church’s burgeoning strength and Salesian proselytization progressively destabilized the societal framework of many Upper Rio Negro communities. This was subsequently overshadowed by rubber exploitation during the rubber boom and the widespread embrace of evangelicalism by a large portion of the community from 1940.

Two wooden display cases with light blue backgrounds hang side-by-side on an off-white wall. The left case holds a single, large, dark brown earthenware bowl. The right case contains two smaller, similar bowls. All three bowls have informational cards beneath them. The bowls appear to be of ancient pottery. — Ancient pottery of Indigenous origin exhibited at the Museu do Índio. (Source: Ajmcbarreto/Wikimedia Commons).

By 2012, Rio Negro Indigenous communities successfully obtained the repatriation of 108 ritual body adornments, complete with stringent guidelines for their exhibition, handling, and application. These items came from Manaus’ Museu do Índio, amassed during their prolonged period of religious instruction and evangelization among local populations. After the decline of the rubber barons’ influence, Salesian priests asserted control over the missions and boarding schools. They enforced Portuguese language instruction and Christian religious doctrines, while strictly suppressing the continuation of Indigenous ritual and cultural customs. Therefore, a significant clash of narratives surrounds the Salesian missions’ impact on the Negro River communities. Some accounts claim their negative role in maintaining traditions, while others assert their valuable alliance with these communities against the encroaching and exploitative rubber economy of the twentieth century.

Traditional knowledge was denied to generations, interrupting the intergenerational transfer of cultural heritage. This occurred because such knowledge could only be passed on through daily life or within ritualistic and culturally significant contexts involving social specialists. Despite claims of not being an archaeological or ethnographical museum, it contains a substantial array of Indigenous artifacts. Yet, its emphasis is not so much on these collections, but rather on communicating the missionaries' experiences throughout the twentieth century in that area. While many missionary’ museums purport to tell the mission's narrative, they paradoxically hold Indigenous artifacts, treated as mere souvenirs from the area. These artifacts are invariably presented as gifts from the community to the priests, but discussion frequently revolves around how secular entities are accountable for the material heritage of foreign populations.

It is contended that these institutions would refuse to defer to the wishes of foreign religious communities, based on their commitment to secular principles and the belief that no religious authority surpasses their own sovereignty. However, the undeniable history of abuse against Indigenous peoples suggests that some of these items might be held by these museums against the Indigenous communities' will. Indigenous peoples have a strong interest in their own history, much of which was erased, and this history is identified through four key cultural components: norms, shared beliefs, language, and, most importantly, material artifacts. As of the last component, the profound spiritual and ceremonial significance of many of these artifacts makes their repatriation a vital step toward reconciliation and restoring Indigenous ownership.

The image is a black and white photograph depicting a large gathering of people inside a building with a thatched roof. The crowd is focused on a central figure in white robes standing on a platform, performing a ritual or ceremony. Behind this figure is a large dark banner or religious icon flanked by palm fronds. The people in the densely packed crowd are dressed in simple, lightly-coloured clothing. The grainy, dark quality of the photo suggests it is historical, and the overall atmosphere appears reverent and solemn, indicating a significant religious or cultural event. — Mission on the Tucano’s People hut. ( Source: Soares d'Azevedo, J. (1950) Nas fronteiras do Brasil: missões salesianas do Amazonas. (Rio de Janeiro: Editora A Noite.).

The colonial roots of the collections and their exoticism are also major criticisms, and anyone familiar with a few missionary museums would likely find these assessments to be accurate, making the question of their continued relevance in the twenty-first century a valid one. However, should they be primarily defined by their European colonial involvement, the destruction of non-European cultural heritage, the forced introduction of Christianity and European lifestyles, and outdated museum practices? While actively building communities and providing vital infrastructure, the missionaries simultaneously operated under the sombre presumption that these Indigenous societies were ultimately doomed, not by religious doctrine, but by the relentless march of expanding mercantilist and capitalist regime.

Thus, their archiving efforts served less as a condemnation of ‘paganism’ and more as an attempt to preserve what they believed was an inevitably fading heritage, subtly shaping its future presentation, and raising questions about their role in its transformation. Therefore, their goal is to both popularize ethnographic knowledge and promote the missionary cause, and the interpretation of these collections must always account for their geographical location and the historical circumstances under which they were created. These institutions were designed to advance missionary aims rather than for scientific purposes, and their resulting hybrid nature is now widely viewed as obsolete. Missionary outreach to the non-Western world experienced unprecedented growth in the late nineteenth century, fuelled by European imperialist expansion, and countless Roman Catholic and Protestant groups and publications rose to support overseas missionaries.

Conversion to Christianity, often tied to colonial rule, demanded that people abandon their traditional deities, spiritual entities, and the material objects linked to them. European missionaries and African catechists relegated many of these artifacts to the status of ‘idols’ and ‘fetishes’, as they burned them to nullify their supposed power, an act that ironically validated the very potency they were trying to destroy. While some items were simply discarded and left to rot, having their purpose seemingly gone, missionaries also collected these materials, shipping them to Europe, where many were put on display in colonial-ethnological museums. Missionary museums are becoming less popular in a globalizing world where people can explore cultural diversity and similarities more easily through media and travel. Indigenous artists and curators contend that reconciliation is impossible until the Vatican makes its generations-old collection of culturally significant Indigenous artifacts visible.

Genuine reconciliation requires meeting the demands of Indigenous peoples, and if these communities ask for their artifacts to be returned, those items should be repatriated. Let’s not forget to point out a further issue: the quality of scholarly documentation in missionary museums! These institutions typically rely on clergy or religious sisters who lack formal training in ethnology, and missionaries are usually the ones who provide vital information on the artifacts' designation, use, and cultural background. The data for these donated pieces is therefore often insufficient or incorrect, as vital information about the artifacts is typically provided by missionaries who are not ethnologists, making the data for these donated pieces often insufficient, incomplete, or simply wrong, which can obscure the true meaning of artifacts from regions like the Rio Negro.