A living culture: when materials evolve alongside craftsmanship
When thinking about the handicrafts of Brazil's Indigenous peoples, one often imagines seeds, plant fibers, wood, feathers, shells, or natural pigments. These materials do indeed hold an important place in many traditional skills. But to reduce Indigenous handicraft to natural materials alone would be to lock living cultures into an image of the past.
Over generations, the Indigenous peoples of Brazil have developed profound knowledge of their territories and the resources surrounding them. Depending on the people, the region, and the ecosystem, the available materials are observed, selected, transformed, and used according to their own unique skills.
But these cultures have not remained locked in the past. They have endured through the centuries, through encounters, exchanges, and the transformations of their lands. And with these changes, new materials have also arrived.
A culture does not disappear simply because a new material enters daily life. It continues to exist through the people who carry it, pass it on, and help it evolve.
This is an important distinction when looking at handicrafts.
The material changes, the skill remains
The materials used in a creation are never completely independent of the world in which the artisan lives.
Some come directly from the territory. Others arrived through trade and contact. They have sometimes been adopted and then integrated into existing practices, to the point of becoming familiar today in the creations of certain peoples.
Miçanga are a perfect example of this.
These small glass beads, now used by various Indigenous peoples of Brazil, are not native to their territories. Yet, they have been integrated into extremely elaborate artistic expressions.
This does not mean that there is a "Miçanga handicraft" common to all peoples. On the contrary: techniques, patterns, colors, uses, and meanings can differ from one people to another.
That is precisely what is interesting.
The material may come from elsewhere and become the medium for an expression deeply unique to those who use it.
Nylon is also present in some contemporary creations. It can serve as a base for assembling Miçanga and may sit alongside fibers or other materials. Here again, its presence does not erase the gesture, the technique, or the knowledge mobilized to create the piece.
Material is not culture. It is one of the means by which culture can express itself.
Tucum and PVC in the same necklace
A necklace attributed to the Marubo people helps make this idea very concrete.
Preserved in the collections of the Museu Nacional dos Povos Indígenas, the scientific and cultural body of Funai, it combines white PVC beads, beads made from the kernel of the tucum palm fruit (Astrocaryum spp.), and a natural fiber cord.
Thus, a plant-based material, a natural fiber, and an industrial material meet in a single object.
The documentation informs us about its composition, but it does not say why the person who made it chose PVC. It would therefore be incorrect to decide for them whether it was recycling, an aesthetic choice, a search for durability, or simply an available material.
What the object allows us to observe is simpler: a contemporary material can enter an Indigenous creation without that creation ceasing, for that reason alone, to belong to an Indigenous cultural expression.
PVC does not need to be an ancestral material to be worked on today by an Indigenous artisan.
In the same way, the use of Miçanga, nylon, or other materials from outside the territory does not mean the artisan is abandoning their culture to adopt someone else's.
They are working with the materials present in the world they live in.
Cultures do not live under a glass dome
This is perhaps where certain European representations of Indigenous handicrafts deserve to be questioned.
There is still a tendency to associate authenticity with a form of immobility: a creation is often considered more "traditional" if it uses exclusively natural materials and replicates the practices of the past.
But cultures are not frozen. They are transmitted while evolving with the people who keep them alive.
Let’s take a very simple example. A French person who moves to live in Brazil may gradually adopt many Brazilian habits. Their daily life changes, their references become enriched, and their way of living can, over the years, be deeply influenced by their host country. Yet, they may continue to eat bread or a baguette with their meals, simply because that habit is part of their history and what they received culturally.
Cultures can thus meet, coexist, and influence each other without one necessarily erasing the other. Over time, a person can carry several cultural influences at once, while remaining deeply attached to their roots.
This comparison obviously has its limits: the histories and realities of Brazil’s Indigenous peoples are unique and cannot be reduced to the experience of a person moving to a different country. But it helps to understand one essential thing: a culture continues to live even when the environment of those who carry it transforms.
Moreover, this reality does not depend on living in a city or on an Indigenous territory. Indigenous peoples live in the contemporary world, in extremely diverse contexts. Technologies, means of communication, and contemporary objects can be part of their daily life wherever they live, according to each individual's realities and choices.
Using a phone, having access to the Internet, using nylon, or working with an industrial material does not, in itself, constitute a contradiction with an Indigenous identity. Nor does the use of these elements allow for measuring a person's attachment to their culture.
A culture is not measured by the materials it uses, nor by the technologies that accompany its daily life, but by what its people continue to carry, transmit, and bring to life.
Knowledge can continue to be passed on. Practices can evolve. Some habits can change while others remain. And above all, it is the people themselves who keep their culture alive and determine how it fits into their present.
Transforming what is available
This idea becomes particularly interesting when we return to the materials used in handicrafts.
Knowledge related to the territory occupies a fundamental place in the lives of many Indigenous peoples of Brazil. It includes ways of knowing, using, and managing available resources, according to practices unique to each people.
But what is available around one also evolves.
Over time, the glass of Miçanga, nylon, and various industrial materials have been added to seeds, fibers, wood, and other natural materials. Some can be integrated into creations, transformed, or sometimes salvaged to find a new use.
This is the case in the work of Jackson Marubo. During my exchanges with him, while selecting jewelry from artisans, Jackson explained to me that he collects PVC meant to be thrown away. He then cuts it into small pieces that he transforms and integrates into his creations, notably in bracelets and necklaces.
His testimony was particularly interesting to me because it shows very concretely how a contemporary material can be salvaged, transformed, and find a new place in the hands of an artisan.
This example concerns the practice of Jackson Marubo. It does not mean that all Marubo artisans work in this way, nor that all Marubo objects containing PVC are made from salvaged materials.
Alongside this contemporary example, the Marubo necklace preserved in the collections of the Museu Nacional dos Povos Indígenas also shows the presence of white PVC beads alongside beads made from the kernel of the tucum palm fruit (Astrocaryum spp.) and a natural fiber cord. For this specific object, we know the materials thanks to its documentation, but not the origin of the PVC or the reasons that led to its use.
These two examples show above all that natural material and industrial material do not necessarily constitute two opposing worlds.
Authenticity is not found in a list of materials
A creation is not culturally authentic simply because it contains a seed, a plant fiber, or wood. And the presence of glass, nylon, or PVC is not enough to call its authenticity into question.
Looking only at the material means forgetting the person who creates.
There are their gestures, their knowledge, the techniques they master, what they have learned, what they transform, and what they might choose to pass on.
There is also a fundamental freedom: the freedom to keep one's own culture alive without having to conform to the image that others have constructed of it.
The Indigenous peoples of Brazil are not immobile representatives of a past that we should find intact in every object. They are contemporary peoples with contemporary cultures that possess a history, roots, and knowledge transmitted from generation to generation.
A new material can enter a creation. A technique can evolve. An artisan can salvage a piece of PVC and decide to transform it. Another person may continue to work a plant fiber according to knowledge passed down within their family or community. A single creation can even bring these different realities together.
One does not necessarily cancel out the other.
Materials tell part of the story of an object. But it is the people who choose them, transform them, and give them a place in their creations.
A living culture is not recognized by its immobility, but by the way in which those who carry it continue to transmit it and bring it to life in their present.