Honey - Staple Food and Indigenous Cultural Asset

Ayoréode provided hollowed tree trunks around popular campsites to attract swarms of bees. (Picture: Archive Apoyo Para el Campesino-Indígena del Oriente Boliviano) A new exhibition in the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich delves into the recent history of the Ayoréode, a nomadic people in the forests of Bolivia, who have had to adapt to settled life for decades. How are they preserving their knowledge of wild bees that is passed down orally? How are they developing their skills in their new living environment? Everyday artifacts and voices from the indigenous community shine a light on what happens when two very different world views and ways of life collide. As nomadic hunters, the Ayoréode lived in the largely inaccessible dry forests and thornbush savannas of the northern Gran Chaco in the border regions of Bolivia and Paraguay. From the 1940s onwards, the Ayoréode - which means "human" in their language - came under increasing pressure. The Gran Chaco woodland area has suffered the fastest deforestation seen anywhere in the world. The region has been invaded by missionaries, settlers and large corporations in the agricultural and extractive industries.