On this week’s episode of Campus Voices, hosts Richard Gordon and Matt Hewett visited University Museum’s exhibit The Ese’Eja People of the Amazon: Connected by a Thread. Our guides included Associate Professor Monica Dominguez Torres, Art History; Assistant Professor Jon Cox, Art and Design; and Andrew Bale, a UD alumnus and lecturer in Art and Art History at Dickinson College.

The goal of the project was to tell the story of the Ese’Eja, or “The True People” as they call themselves, from the point of view of the members of the community. The Ese’Eja people occupy a minimal fraction of their original territory, limited to three residential settlements: Infierno, Palma Real, and Sonene. Andy and Jon traveled to these villages with the leaders of the community to photograph and videotape their daily lives, as well as gather the artifacts displayed in the exhibit.

This exhibition features Jon and Andrew’s photographs, daguerreotypes and platinum-palladium prints that explore the worldview, ancestral lands, way of life, and contemporary challenges of this resilient society.

Monica and undergraduate students in one of her seminars researched other museum exhibitions about indigenous cultures and then selected objects that are exhibited side-by-side with the photographs.

Listen to the Interview

Jon Cox, Andrew Bale, and Monica Domingez Torres
29:59
27 MB

Learn More

• Andy Bale talks about the platinum palladium printing process used for many of the images in the exhibition.
• Jon Cox and Monica Dominguez Torres discuss some of the images of Ese’Eja life on the river.
• Exhibition guide: The Ese’Eja People of the Amazon: Connected by a Thread (UD Center for Material Culture Studies)