Page 42 - UD Research Magazine Vol5-No1

—The— participants
The participants who spent three weeks with the Ese’Eja in May 2014 worked in small teams focusing on a particular aspect of the project:
PROJECT MANAGERS:
Jon Cox, assistant professor of art at the University of Delaware, and Rocio Martinez, of Rainforest Expeditions in Peru
ESE’EJA REPRESENTATIVES:
Carlos Dejaviso Poje, president of the board of the Ese’Eja Nation in Peru, and Victor Pesha, an Ese’Eja elder
UD ANTHROPOLOGY TEAM:
Carla Guerrón Montero, associate professor, and student Chelsea Rozanski
ETHNOBOTANY TEAM:
Katherine Koumoutseas, a consultant whose daughter is a UD student, and UD engineer- ing and plant science student Brian Griffiths
UD EDUCATION TEAM:
Rosalie Rolón Dow, associate professor, and student Morgan Lehr
PHOTOGRAPHY/VIDEO TEAM:
Jon Cox; Andrew Bale, Dickinson College photography professor and a 2005 UD alumnus; Steven Zeigler, a New York City Apple employee and a 2007 UD graduate; and UD visual communications student Lindsay Yeager.
OTHERS THAT HAVE BECOME INVOLVED: Vicki Cassman, UD associate professor of art conservation, and two groups of students who are working with the objects that will make up a planned exhibition
Monica Dominguez Torres, associate professor of art history at UD, and some of her students, who will work on developing the exhibition
Priscila Rodriguez, an indigenous- rights lawyer in Washington, D.C., who is working to help the Ese’Eja gain legal access to their homeland
THE SUPPORTERS
Support for the project has come from the Amazon Center for Environmen- tal Education and Research, Dickinson College, the Greater Philadelphia Latin American Studies Consortium, National Geographic’s Genographic Legacy Fund, and Rainforest Expeditions in Peru.
University of Delaware units support- ing the work include the Department
of Anthropology, Department of Art, a General University Research Grant, the Institute for Global Studies, the College
of Arts and Sciences’ Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center, the Office of Undergraduate Research and Experiential Learning, and the School of Education.
The team eventually purchased about 70 items, from traditional hand-woven baskets and cloth made of tree bark to a bag woven from used plastic bottles that would likely be sold to tourists. Plans are to document the objects and their uses and to create a traveling exhibition to fur- ther share the Ese’Eja culture with others before returning the collection to Peru.
Griffiths did, however, spend a lot of time in the forest, working with an edu- cational field ethnobotanist who served as a consultant to the team. They docu- mented a variety of plants—through field notes and sketches—and interviewed members of the Ese’Eja about each plant’s use as food, raw material or traditional medicine.
Because all the plant material the group studied was to be left with the community, the botanists documented everything in photos and labeled speci- mens with scientific names, as well as the common Spanish and Ese’Eja names.
The eventual goal is to include the results of the research in an international ethnobotanical database.
Another result of the three-week proj- ect is a map showing the Ese’Eja’s ancestral lands. Using a 10-foot sheet of brown paper, elders from the community worked with the team to draw a map showing
such key locations as traditional hunting, fishing and burial sites.
Team members used GPS on the ground to visit as many of those sites as possible and overlay the hand-drawn map with specific coordinates.
“I was never working alone on the map,” Griffiths says. “It took a lot of peo- ple and several weeks to figure it all out.” For the Ese’Eja, whose population once numbered as many as 20,000 but is now reduced to about 600, all forms of documentation are essential. The com- munity members realize that they must preserve the memories their elders have, while those elders remain physically able to walk through the forest and to recall their traditional knowledge.
That’s what two members of the community told an audience in Delaware when they visited the University in Octo- ber to talk more about the project and to see what had been accomplished since the team left Peru last May.
“We want to share our unique culture, and we want to preserve our culture,” Carlos Dejaviso Poje, president of the board of the Ese’Eja Nation in Peru, said at the time, speaking through a translator. “We don’t know how long we will have our elders. We need them for the link they provide to our knowledge and traditions.”
40 | UD RESEARCH
Professor Vicki Cassman and her art conservation team are caring for some 70 Ese’Eja objects.
What
happens
next?
by Ann Manser
When two representatives of the Ese’Eja came
to the University of Delaware campus for follow-up discus- sions about the project that
had brought a UD team to Peru earlier in the year, one of their stops was in an art conservation workroom in the campus build- ing known as Old College.
There, some 70 objects the community provided for further study are housed. The collec- tion includes baskets and bark