Context and Challenges

Decolonization debates at European ethnographic museums and their sound archives have shifted focus from just returning and restituting stored recordings to also involving collaboration with Indigenous source communities. This includes not only returning and resocializing recordings but also supporting future efforts in documenting, archiving, and outreach of indigenous music. These changes respond to the needs expressed by indigenous groups, their concepts of ownership of auditory knowledge, their views on the relationship between material and immaterial entities, and their desire for ongoing dialogue with sound archives and heritage initiatives.
The challenges presented by the return of these archives concern acknowledging the Indigenous ontologies of sound and music that they embody. From the viewpoint of indigenous experts, humans, animals, songs, natural sounds, sound carriers, and other entities form a social community. In this way, the resocialization of sound needs to take into consideration that sound is, or is connected to, a social entity and, therefore, it is part of the social life of Indigenous communities.

Research Questions

The project aims to develop a systematic understanding of how sound archives can ensure that indigenous auditory knowledge is appropriately accessed, documented, archived, and made audible within and beyond its source communities. In this sense, it addresses questions such as: How can processes for access and the technical reproducibility of indigenous auditory knowledge, as well as its circulation, be designed and made visible and audible, especially in light of current digitalization practices? How can indigenous conceptions regarding the resocialization of immaterial and material entities, and their relationships to each other, be made translatable into Western conceptions, such as "living cultural heritage"? How can indigenous performances be organized for archiving and collaborative exhibitions?

Collections, Archives, Methodology and Work Structure

These questions will be answered in a set of four interconnected work packages (archival/museum research → fieldwork → education → outreach).
The archival research involves Indigenous visits to European archives, where Indigenous specialists evaluate and investigate the recording and documentation practices of their sound performances made in the past. The project works with historical collections from the Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève (leading collection partner), the Museum der Kulturen Basel and the Ethnological Museum Berlin. The relationships of material and immaterial cultural heritage will be addressed collaboratively, taking as a point of departure the historical collections (sound recordings, objects, photos) of the Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève on the Apalai-Wayana collections, and the collection of Manfred Rauschert's recordings of the Apalai-Wayana at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar.
The knowledge gained in this stage will inform the fieldwork dimension of the project, which will be conducted mainly by Indigenous specialists, and help resocialize the sound archives within their communities. An educational course will be developed as part of the project, in partnership with the Federal University of Amapá (UniFap), utilizing archival material as a bridge between the young and elderly, and also creating new cultural documents that will be incorporated into the museum partners of the project for the benefit of the involved communities.

Outputs and Dissemination

The outcomes will be shared through academic articles, an exhibition at the Musée d'ethnographie de Genève opening in June 2028, a conference and its proceedings, and proposed guidelines for sound archives on the collaborative documentation, archiving, and making audible Indigenous auditory knowledge. Additional outputs include a possible parallel exhibition in Macapá (Brazil), an audio release (LP/CD) from legally cleared recordings, and an exhibition catalog or book. These results will add to ongoing discussions in music research, ethnomusicology, anthropology, and museum studies regarding ontological frameworks in studying indigenous communities and other minority musical cultures. Lastly, the requirements for sharing indigenous auditory knowledge in a European setting will be outlined.
Partnerships and Collaboration
Our research will be conducted in close collaboration with our partners from the Laboratory for the Archiving of Indigenous Sound Performances at the Federal University of Pará, Belém, Brazil ( LABETNO-UFPA) and the Associação dos Povos Indígenas Wayana e Aparai (APIWA) in Macapá and Tumucumaque Park, the Instituto de Pesquisa e Formação Indígena (Iepé), and the Sacaca Museum in Macapá.
This Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) funded project (Grant #220198) runs from 2023 to 2028, led by Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar.

Projektteam:
•    Prof. Dr. Matthias Lewy (Antragssteller und Koordination)
•    Dr. Thiago da Costa Oliveira (Projektleiter)
•    Bruno Britto (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter)
•    Silvino Almeida (wissenschaftliche Assistenz)

Projektpartner/innen:
•     Arinaware Apalai Waiana (Präsident der Associação dos Povos Indígenas Aparai e Wayana – APIWA)
•     Líliam Cristina Barros Cohen, LabEtno Instituto de Ciências da Arte - ICA Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil
•    Eliane Camargo, IPÊ Association pour le dialogue interculturelle, France
•    Tiago de Oliveira Pinto, Institut für Musikwissenschaft Hochschule für Musik FRANZ LISZT Weimar, Germany
•    Günther Giovannoni, Swiss National Spound Archive, Switzerland
•    Natasha Amaruay Hauer Gordon (Pemón) 
•    Madeleine Leclair, Musée d'Ethnographie, Switzerland
•    Andrea Scholz, Ethnologisches Museum im Humboldt Forum, Germany