Indigeniteter og religiøsiteter på museer i Ecuador

Abstract

This study explores how museums in Ecuador exhibit indigeneities and religiosities or religion. It analyses how the exhibits produce particular expressions and conceptualizations of "indigenous religion(s)". I conducted fieldwork in Ecuador in January and February 2017, and again for eight days in October 2017. I visited 26 different museums, some of them several times. During my visits, I observed the exhibitions and looked for uses of categories, phrases, constellations, and framings that could relate objects and subjects to my analytical concepts. I have tried to keep the content of the concepts open in order to let the museums fill them with specific substance and meaning. The contemporary exhibitions at three museums are described and analyzed rigorously, whereas the survey of the 23 other museums maps and contextualizes the field. I argue that particular expressions of "indigenous religion(s)" are present at museums in Ecuador, but they are complex and diverse, and expressed through different media in a broad range of ways. Three salient aspects of the museums’ expressions of "indigenous religion(s)" are that they come across (1) as traditions and practices belonging to ancient times and descended from the ancestors, (2) as belonging to specific places in Ecuador, and as still practiced in these places, and (3) as belonging to a specific kind of peoples who lives in these specific places.