The return of the ceremonial cloak is part of diplomatic efforts by Brazil’s government to recover other Indigenous objects from museums in France, Japan, and elsewhere.

Measuring just under 1.8 meters high and featuring red feathers of the scarlet ibis bird, the cloak arrived back in Rio in early July, where it is being stored at the Museo Nacional.

“I felt sadness and joy. A mixture between being born and dying,” said Yakuy Tupinamba, who viewed the artefact after travelling more than 1,200 kilometres by bus from the eastern Olivenca municipality.

The 64-year-old, wearing a feather headdress, is among roughly 200 Tupinambas camped in grounds near the museum, where they held a traditional vigil with maracas-filled music.

Yakuy said Europeans “put (the cloak) in a museum, as if it were a zoo, for art scholars to observe… (But) only our people communicate and engage with such a symbol.”

The return of the cloak was announced by the National Museum of Denmark in June.

In a statement on its website, the Copenhagen-based museum said that the transfer was “a significant and unique contribution” from Denmark side to the rebuilding of the Brazilian museum, which lost its collection in a devastating fire in 2018.

“Cultural heritage plays a crucial role in nations’ narratives about themselves and in peoples’ self-understanding. This is true all over the world, and that is why it is important for us to help rebuild the Brazilian National Museum after the devastating fire a few years ago,” Rane Willerslev, director of the National Museum of Denmark, said in the statement.

According to the Danish museum, there are only 11 Tupinambá feather cloaks, all of which are housed in European museums. Five of these were in the National Museum of Denmark’s collection, with the returned cloak among the best preserved. 

It is not known how the now-returned cloak left Brazil, though experts believe it was first made in the mid-16th century, when the country was under Portuguese colonization.

Its return is part of a push by President Lula’s leftist government to better support Brazil’s Indigenous people, who are also demanding territorial demarcation.

The mantle “is our father and our mother. Our ancestors say that when they (the Europeans) took it away, our village was left without a north,” Sussu Arana Morubyxada Tupinamba, one of those camping near the museum, told AFP.

“Now we have a direction again: the demarcation of our territory by the Brazilian state,” added the Indigenous chief.

The Tupinambas have demanded the government recognize the boundaries of more than 47,000 hectares where around 8,000 families live, making their living from fishing and farming.

They say the mineral-rich territory is being devastated by large agriculture and mining businesses.

Despite being a government promise, only a handful of territories have been recognized since Lula began his third term in January 2023.

“The return of the mantle means — not only for the Tupinamba people but also for the Brazilian people — a stop to the devastation of the Amazon, of the forests, of the mangroves,” said Cacique Arana.

Thursday’s ceremony in Rio will likely take place under a cloud of smoke from wildfires that are impacting several parts of Brazil, as it faces a devastating drought.

Thousands of fires have been unleashed, including in the Amazon — a phenomenon that scientists say is linked to climate change.