Biocultural heritage and community voice in Amazonia

Textile cultural heritage embodies the social and ecological relations, understandings, skills and beliefs that connect people to place. Despite the significance of textiles for defining and representing indigenous identity in the lowland Amazon, there are few academic sources and most accessible resources, such as the Museum of Indigenous Amazonian Cultures in Iquitos, present this diverse heritage primarily as a collection of objects rather enabling indigenous communities to choose how they are represented or how they wish to use their cultural heritage to interact with the wider world. This project aims to establish how indigenous peoples in lowland Amazonian Peru can use cultural heritage to support resilience, adaptation and autonomy at a time of increased stress both gradual (e.g. expansion of oil exploitation, growth of markets for non-timber forest products) and abrupt (e.g. oil spills, epidemic, displacement).