Museu do Índio, Indigenous museum in Botafogo, Brazil.
The Museu do Índio is an ethnographic museum in the Botafogo neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, dedicated to the indigenous peoples of Brazil. Its holdings cover objects, photographs, audio recordings, and documents drawn from communities across the country.
The museum was founded in 1953 by the anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro, making it the first public institution in Brazil devoted entirely to indigenous cultures. It later moved to a late 19th-century mansion in Botafogo, where it has been housed ever since.
The museum occupies a 19th-century mansion whose garden feels as much a part of the visit as the indoor rooms. Traditional dwelling structures built by indigenous groups stand on the grounds, giving visitors a direct sense of how spaces were shaped for everyday life.
The museum is easy to reach on foot from the Botafogo metro station, which is nearby. The collection covers both indoor galleries and outdoor structures, so it helps to plan for enough time to see both properly.
The museum holds one of the largest audio archives of indigenous languages in South America, with recordings of languages that are rarely spoken today. This makes the collection valuable beyond its objects, since some of the voices captured there belong to people who were among the last speakers of their language.
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