Following a catastrophic fire on 2nd September, the extent of the cultural loss at Brazil’s National Museum is becoming clear:
Folks, there’s nothing left from the Linguistics division. We lost all the indigenous languages collection: the recordings since 1958, the chants in all the languages for which there are no native speakers alive anymore, the Curt Niemuendaju archives: papers, photos, negatives, the original ethnic-historic-linguistic map localizing all the ethnic groups in Brazil, the only record that we had from 1945. The ethnological and archeological references of all ethnic groups in Brazil since the 16th century… An irreparable loss of our historic memory. It just hurts so much to see all in ashes.
—Cinda Gonda, translated by Diogo Almeida, about the fire at Brazil’s National Museum.
This is a very particular kind of loss. An entirely different thing from the death of a person, this is the death of the memory that entire groups of people even existed. Continue reading “Something Eternally Lost”