Rio Antes do Rio

Rio de Janeiro is a city of cultural and ancestral erasures. Portuguese colonization was very effective in destroying what existed before on our land. Studying the indigenous peoples of Guanabara is, first and foremost, to recognize oneself and understand how we came to be here. They were the owners of the bay, the mountains and forests, they gave the names to places, animals and plants. They resisted, fought and perished for this land. They are the genesis of the Brazilian personality, of our way of being and living. We speak words that came from them and were strange to European Portuguese. The gallery O Rio antes do Rio presents fragments of the geographical, historical and cultural ancestry of the indigenous peoples of Guanabara, as well as their territories, knowledge and reminiscences that even today are among us, cariocas.