Participants: Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora, USA) and Paul Chaat-Smith (Comanche, USA), Candice Hopkins (Canadá), João Pacheco de Oliveira (Brasil), Edmundo Mendes Pereira (Brasil)

Moderator: Betânia Gonçalves Figueiredo (Brasil)

Biographies

Jolene Rickard is a writer and photographer who received her doctorate from the State University of New York in Buffalo, where she is currently a professor. She has a Master of Science degree from Buffalo State College, a Bachelor of Fine and Applied Art from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and has studied at the London College of Printing in England.

Paul Chaat Smith has emerged as one of the decade's leading voices on issues of American Indian art, identity, mass culture and politics. Appointed Critic in Residence three times in galleries in the U.S. and Canada, Smith has curated exhibitions, written catalog essays, and organized film exhibitions. He has lectured at the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in Los Angeles. In 1994 the Sundance Institute asked him to contribute with an essay for their catalog and chair a panel at that year's festival on recent Indian movies and Hollywood. In 1995, he appeared on the cable television program Markings with Neil Bissondath. The one hour interview, titled "Black Elk Reconsidered," aired nationally in Canada.

Candice Hopkins (Métis, Tlingit) is the curator in residence at the Walter Phillips Gallery. She has an MA from The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, NY. Her recent curatorial project, Every Stone Tells a Story: The Performance Work of David Hammons and Jimmie Durham, opened at the Berrie Center Art Galleries, Ramapo College, NJ in November 2004. Her writing is featured in www.horizonzero.ca, FUSE Magazine, Transference, Tradition, Technology: Native New Media Exploring Visual and Digital Culture, and Making a Noise! Aboriginal Perspectives on Art, Art History, Critical Writing and Community, both to be published by the Walter Phillips Gallery. Hopkins has lectured at Tate Britain, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland, UK, Dak'Art_Lab, Senegal and in Canada at the Alberta College of Art and Design.

João Pacheco de Oliveira is a Full Professor of Ethnology in the Museu Nacional/RJ (National Museum/RJ), where he is a research advisor. He teaches in the post-graduate program in Social Anthropology in the same institution. As Level 1A researcher from CNPq, he has co-ordinated the project: "Study on the Native´s Lands in Brazil: invasions, soil and natural resources usage", sponsored by Ford Foundation and by CNPq, from 1985 to 1993. He has been working on the Ticuna Natives since 1974. He was the president of the Brazilian Association of Anthropology from 1994 to 1996.

Edmundo Pereira: Anthropologist, ethnomusicologist and musician. PhD Thesis in progress at PPGAS/National Museum-UFRJ. He is working on the theme: Ritual and Politics among the Uitoto-murui from Putumayo River, in Colombian Amazon. Researcher from the Research Laboratory in Ethnicity, Culture and Development (LACED) from the National Museum/UFRJ, where he is the co-editor of the collection: Sound Documents from the National Museum. Founding member of 'Gesta', a group which has developed works in the intersection between Classical and Popular Music. In 2004 he launched a CD: The Gold Key of the going-no-returning Kingdom (A chave de ouro do reino do vai-não-volta). He has made field researches and recordings in Minas Gerais, specially in the Valley of Middle Jequitinhonha River since 1996. He focuses on the ´Country guitar' (viola caipira) and the repertoire of songs associated to it. He is a member of the Brazilian Association of Ethnic-Musicology and of ICTM (International Council for Traditional Music).

Betânia Gonçalves Figueiredo: Professor at the History Department/UFMG, Master´s degree in History (Unicamp) and PhD in Sociology (USP). Author of the book: A arte de Curar: cirurgiões, médicos, boticários e curandeiros no século XIX em Minas Gerais, (2002) and co-ordinator of the Net of Museums/UFMG (2000 to 2004).