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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

musee du quai Branly

http://modules.quaibranly.fr/metis/metis_en.html

This site connected with an exhibit (planete metisse) at the Paris museum, musee du quai Branly explores colonization and contact between the culture of the colonized and the colonizer. The exhibit displays objects from the begining of colonization to the present day. This is a subject I think of often, especially with regards to Latin American countries where indigenous people created a hybrid religion, that is still practiced to this day, by masking their own deities in the catholic saints of Spain. This phenomenon took on a whole new level in the Caribbean where Spanish culture met with indigenous culture met with African culture that came with the slaves imported by the Spanish. Masking the deities in Catholic disguise allowed oppressed peoples to continue practicing their religions under the watchful eye of the colonizers.