Dr. Suzanne Oakdale will present her lecture, Objects of Attraction: Understanding Material Goods in Indigenous Amazonian Cosmologies, on Thursday, February 20 at 7:30 pm in the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology in celebration of World Anthropology Day.  The event is free and open to the public.

Indigenous Amazonian societies have long been famous for lacking heirlooms.  Objects do not tend to be passed down through the generations, but rather are often destroyed at death.  Rather than indicating the unimportance of objects, their disposal indicates their extraordinary power to unite subjects across the vast spaces and times of the cosmos.  This talk explores this power of objects for one Amazonian people, the Kawaiwete, as well as draws on comparative cases from elsewhere in Amazonia. The lecture is part of the Anthropology Day celebration of the American Anthropological Association and supports the exhibition: Heartbreak: A Love Letter to the Lost National Museum of Brazil at the Maxwell Museum.