Biocultural knowledge, power and poetics in South American featherwork.

The focus of this doctoral project is on South American objects made by Indigenous peoples out of feathers, or with feathers attached, in the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) collections. Feathered ornaments result from specific combinations of symbolic meanings associated with feathers' particular colours, sizes and shapes, the different degrees that birds are esteemed by particular cultures, the occasions on which they are used (religious, shamanic or civil), the place they are worn, etc. (Escobar 2007). 'A striking feature of the Indian cultures of South America' - said the anthropologist Métraux (1944) - 'is the extensive use of feathers both for body ornaments and for decorations of bodies and other artifacts'.

And he continued: 'Nowhere have feathers been worked more lavishly or with greater skill than there.'

Yet while visitors gazing at the featherwork displays in the PRM might marvel at the sheer variety of objects' forms and colours, the multitude of links between particular artefacts, peoples and places remain hidden; visitors are unable to discern and trace specific object histories, meanings and geographies (Gosden and Larson 2007). Exploring South American featherwork in the PRM collections, this interdisciplinary, practice-based doctoral project will seek to develop ways of telling histories of specific objects that shed light not only on the historical processes of collection in the field and the 'lives' of the objects in the museum, but also on contemporary debates on Indigenous cultural identity, sovereignty and heritage rights (Françozo 2012), as well as the dynamic relationships among Indigenous peoples, birds, and environments.

The project aims to provide understanding of these feathered objects as historical biocultural objects, which afford ways of telling the histories in which biodiversity emerges. As Tsing (2012) argues, 'plants and animals are part of a human disturbance regime; they have a contaminated history.'

This project is timely. The loss of biocultural diversity in South America has accelerated significantly in recent years, with satellite images showing fierce fires engulfing the heart of the continent's forests and savanna. Although fires are customary in the region, 'the unusually severe scale of fires corresponded to direct government encouragement', specifically in Brazil and Bolivia (Laurence 2019), who favour agribusiness, mining, and hydroelectric megaprojects in detriment of the globally significant richness of biodiversity, Indigenous cultural heritage and territorial rights.

In current Indigenous resistance movements, feathered artefacts, alongside face paint and music, are being used as tools for empowerment. Showing agency grounded in Indigenous identity, this self-representation places objects held in museum stores central to present day Indigenous resistance movements.

Investigating the PRM's feathered objects, associated archives and photographic collections (such as Moser and Tayler's in Colombia, Rivière's in Surinam and Posey's in Brazil), the project will develop, in collaboration with Indigenous peoples, a selected case study as the basis of curatorial interventions in

the PRM, aiming at empowering Indigenous groups, showcasing their ways of defending the natural world and securing a sustainable way of lifegiving. Posey's work is of particular relevance here, given his research on the bioethics of ethnobiology and support for Indigenous intellectual property rights. Also important is the object collection of Audrey Butt Colson, for her support of the Indigenous peoples' fight for land rights.