MUSEUM OF AMAZON INDIGENOUS CULTURES
Owned and run by Fundamazonia/ Amazoneco
Located at 332 Malecon Tarapaca, Iquitos, Peru
Open 9am-6pm
Closed on Tuesdays
Entrance fee S/15 Soles
The museum celebrates the cultures of Indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin through a display of ethnographic items, including ceremonial attire, musical instruments, domestic utensils, hunting and fishing equipment, and other artistic and daily artefacts.
The displays are arranged by themes and geographical regions and include the following sections:
1. Pre-Colombian Amazon culture
2. Hunting fishing and agriculture
3. Importance of ceremonial dress in Amazonian cultures
4. Voluntarily isolated Indigenous groups
5. Eastern Amazon
6. Xingu region – Para and Mato Grosso
7. Northern Amazon
8. Three frontiers and Colombia
9. Loreto
10. Western Amazon and Andean foothills
11. Southern Peru – Bolivia
The Museum of Indigenous Amazonian Cultures uses ethnographic items to show the diversity of Amazonian cultures and how they live in nature both in their everyday life and in the reality of their spiritual world. Over 300 ethnographic items are displayed, and explanations are in both Spanish and English. The Indigenous cultures include:
Achuar
Aguaruna
Aripaktsa
Asháninka
Arawete
Bora
Bororo
Cashinahua
Kukama
Hixkaryana
Kaiapo
Kalapalo
Karaja
Korubo
Kuikuru
Mascho Piro
Matses
Matis
Murunahua
Oiampii
Palikur
Piro
Rikbaktsa
Shipibo
Tapirape
Tembé
Tiriyo
Xavante
Tikuna
Txikao
Urubu Kaapor
Yagua
Yanomami
Wai Wai
Wayana Aparai
The Indigenous peoples of the Amazon possess an unprecedented, intimate knowledge of their environment: the animals, plants, rivers, lakes, and seasons. They have lived in the rainforest for thousands of years using the environment as a source for food, as building material for their houses and canoes, and as clothes, ornaments, ritual objects, medicine and tools.
Amazonian cultures respect their surroundings not simply as resources, but as an ecosystem deeply ingrained in their daily lives, myths and ceremonies. Indigenous people of the Amazon are part of nature and live in nature. All parts of the physical world, each tree, each animal, has a purpose and spiritual meaning that determines how the people live and work, their values, beliefs, and costumes.
