Zapara People

The description we have of the shields French diplomat Charles Wiener brought in 1880 do not provide us with any detailed information other than “Napo, Indiens Záparos”. Four of them are currently conserved in the Quai Branly Museum. A recent visit by a Zápara leader has since helped the musem discover its own Zápara collection. Subsequently, photographs of these artefacts were shown to the Ecuadorian organization and in turn revealed a different appreciation of the ancient objects. Through an analytical discussion of this contemporary viewing of the ancient artefacts through photographic image, I put forth the argument that statements generated by Zápara today about ancestral shields mark a rediscovery of their culture, a questioning of who the Zápara people are, as well as an assertion against oblivion.

"En offrant aux Zapara le rêve pour communiquer avec lui, le démiurge Piatsaw leur a permis de penser le monde, de retrouver la connaissance et la mémoire, et d'envisager l'avenir -- la nuit permettant d'atteindre l'essence des choses et de dépasser les frontières du temps et de l'espace.

En Equateur, les Zapara recherchent désormais dans les visions oniriques les réponses aux questions que leur pose l'existence, qu'il s'agisse d'un accord politique à trouver ou d'un évènement historique à comprendre.

Profondément ancrée dans le quotidien, l'expérience du rêve est ainsi constamment interrogée par les Indiens Zapara pour faire face aux nouveaux défis de la mondialisation."

--- The book was reviewed in 2012,  by Karen Shiratori, in Mana (vol.18 no.2 Rio de Janeiro Aug. 2012)
--- also by Laura Rival in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (Vol. 20, Issue 1, 165–166, March 2014
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.12087_6/full )
--- and by Andrea Luz Gutierrez Choquevilca in Journal de la société des Américanistes (vol. 99-2,  230-240)

Twice reprinted.
2nd edition in process

"El aporte de Anne-Gaël Bilhaut es mostrar cómo el saber a través del sueño en la cultura Zápara constituye el eje organizador e interpretativo de su proceso de etnogénesis. Tal como lo expresa en el prólogo Jacques Galinier: “en el momento de globalización de lo étnico, etapa histórica de la cual los záparas no puede escapar, una tradición cultural se reinventa pasando por el filtro organizativo de lo onírico”. Continuando con la tradición etnográfica amazonista iniciada por Philippe Descola y Anne Christine Taylor, para la nacionalidad Achuar, y Laura Rival, para la nacionalidad Waorani, la autora nos ofrece una riquísima y detallada etnografía sobre la nacionalidad Zápara de la Amazonía ecuatoriana. Se trata de una cultura que también está asentada en la Amazonía peruana y que estuvo a punto de desaparecer. Sin embargo, debido a la declaración de patrimonio de la humanidad por parte de UNESCO en el año 2001 y sobre todo al proceso de etnogénesis llevado adelante por los miembros de este pueblo y sus antepasados, actualmente se encuentran en un proceso de revitalización e identidad cultural."
Fernando Garcia, Profesor investigador, FLACSO Sede Ecuador

The ethnographic study of the Zápara case brings new and original data about memory building processes. The Amazonian Zápara achieve knowledge about their past through dreams that also have a fundamental role in their daily life. We will see how their history is constructed by means of dream experiences, and how these are used strategically in the present. Dreams, furthermore, guarantee the cultural and ritual continuity of this group on the verge of extinction.

The Zápara Indians in the Upper Amazon are on the verge of disappearing from the linguistic map. In this paper, I argue that the Zápara dreamers reconstruct the collective memory through their subjective dream experiences. I will explore how a few experienced dreamers are able to journey by dream to a “memory house”, where they can record their own memory or knowledge for the next generations, and receive the ancestors’ knowledge. Moreover, when Manari, one of the young leaders, came to the Quai Branly Museum (Paris, France) to discover the Zápara reserve collection, he provided an original example of the reacquisition of knowledge through conserved artefacts. Thanks to those unusual examples, I will show how the Zapara succeed in being recognized as a living and original people, facing new situations. The dream, as a tool for engaging in the return to the past, provides the historical elements that the Indians then re-inject into their present in order to construct new “traditions”.