“ Thetribeisbesiegedbymoderndevelopment. TheAmambayHillsareahasalonghistoryof encountersbetweenthenativesandnational
politicalandeconomicinterests.Agreat majorityofthesecaseshaveendedtothedetri- mentoftheenvironmentandtheGuaranis.”
Panorama of Amambay Hills, center of the earth for the Pai Tavytera Guarani Indians of Paraguay.
TheMuseumDonation An effort to preserve this community led to an offer in 2014 to donate a Pai Tavytera altar to the National Museum of the American In- dian. The initiative came from the Solar Map Project (
SolarMapProject.com),
founded
and led by Frank Weaver, a Paraguayan film- maker residing in the U.S., with his brother, James. This project is producing a documen- tary about ancient rock art located in the Amambay Hills and the rich culture of its guardians, the Pai Tavytera Indians. The tribe is besieged by modern development. The Amambay Hills area has a long history of encounters between the natives and national political and economic interests. A great ma- jority of these cases have ended to the detri-
ment of the environment and the Guaranis. Today, the region is heavily deforested. Cattle ranching and soybean farms have forced the Pai Tavytera to abandon some of their tra- ditional subsistence strategies and look for other ways of life. The desire to have a permanent record
of Pai Tavytera survival in the Museum in- spired the idea of commissioning a new altar. The native community of Ita Guazu agreed through their leaders. Stella I. Gonzalez de Olmo, a researcher of
the rock art, commented on the significance of this donation: “This altar conserves the value of a tan-
gible and intangible heritage that, in a cer- tain way, represents the culture of the Pai
Tavytera; the message it conveys is also a contribution to the whole world. The dona- tion of the altar to this Museum will allow the world to value this heritage and to give it its true meaning. It will facilitate the under- standing and appreciation of these ancestral places [the Amambay Hills and the rock art] so rich in intangible heritage and will foment the public awareness and the commitment for their protection and conservation. “This way of presenting the Pai culture
is by its own nature a communicative act. It will increase public awareness and will allow peoples from very different regions to learn more about Paraguay, which to date does not have a program to protect and value the culture of the Pai.”
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 23
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