Berta Gleizer Ribeiro (born Bertha Gleizer; BÃÂlÃÂi, 2 October 1924 â Rio de Janeiro, 17 November 1997) was a Moldovan-Brazilian anthropologist, ethnologist, and museologist known for her extensive work on the material culture of Indigenous peoples of Brazil. She was married to anthropologist and senator Darcy Ribeiro.
Born in BÃÂlÃÂi, then part of Romania, Berta and her older sister Genny were left in Eastern Europe after their motherâÂÂs suicide, as their father had already migrated to Brazil seeking work opportunities amid the antisemitic persecution faced by Jews in the region. Only with the aid of an international organization were they able to reunite with him in 1932. Years later, her sister and father were arrested and deported for alleged subversive activities during a period of intense political repression against Jewish immigrants at the outset of the Vargas dictatorship. Orphaned, Berta was cared for by families of Jewish immigrants under the protection of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), later marrying Darcy Ribeiro in 1948.
Berta RibeiroâÂÂs career initially followed the professional and political movements of her husband over the years, but her prominence surged after their separation in the 1970s, when she was already 50 years old. She developed a newfound passion for the knowledge and practices of indigenous peoples, a personal shift that fueled her contributions across various domains: academic, political, cultural, editorial, and artistic, ultimately establishing her as the foremost expert on indigenous material culture in Brazil during her time.
She conducted fieldwork to develop her research, engaging directly with diverse indigenous communities across several Brazilian states. She visited numerous museums worldwide, organized exhibitions on , and published extensively on indigenous peoples and their customs. She also established key methodological foundations and classification systems for material culture research and ethnographic museum documentation. Her prolific academic, artistic, and cultural output stemmed from her unwavering dedication to her work, as she engaged in multiple roles â researcher, museum collection curator, author of nine books and over forty articles, contributor to various works, and university professor in undergraduate and graduate programs. Until the end of her life, she remained active in the fields of anthropology, museology, ethnology, art, and ecology.
She was a member of the (ABA), the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (SBPC), the Regional Museology Council of Rio de Janeiro, and the editorial boards of the journals Ciências em Museus, Ciência Hoje das Crianças, and the '. She served on the selection committee for postgraduate studies in Visual Arts and taught in the masterâÂÂs program in History and Art Criticism at the School of Fine Arts (EBA/UFRJ). She acted as an advisor to the National Indigenous People Foundation (FUNAI) and head of museology at the National Museum of Indigenous People (MI), taught in the Anthropology Department of the National Museum, and conducted research for the National Geographic Society.
Bertha Gleizer was born on 2 October 1924 in the city of BÃÂlÃÂi (now in Moldova), in the Romanian region of Bessarabia. From a Jewish family, she was the daughter of Rosa Sadovinic Gleizer and Motel Gleizer. Her father left the country in July 1929, immigrating to Brazil in search of better living conditions, as the situation for Jews in Romania had become precarious due to rising antisemitism, the emergence of Christian fascist movements, and attacks known as pogroms in the region. Unable to immediately bring his family or provide for them, Motel received news of his wife RosaâÂÂs suicide, as she could no longer endure their dire circumstances, leaving their two daughters alone. Through the intervention of the Jewish Colonisation Association (JCA), an international organization aiding Jewish emigration, and with the help of Rabbi Raffalovich, the girls were brought to Brazil. Berta arrived in Rio de Janeiro as an immigrant at the age of eight, accompanied by her fourteen-year-old sister, (sometimes spelled Jenny), in 1932. Living in extreme poverty, the three shared a single room on . Her father worked as a merchant near Onze Square, a hub of the Jewish community at the time.
In 1934, Genny moved to São Paulo in search of work but was arrested as a minor by the São Paulo political police on 15 July 1935 for alleged subversive activities. She was held incommunicado for an extended period, enduring physical and psychological torture, and despite widespread public outcry and protests against her detention, she was deported to Romania on the night of 12 October 1935 via the Port of Santos aboard the French cargo ship Aurigny. Upon arriving in France, however, she was rescued and later settled in the United States, where she obtained a degree in psychology. Her case coincided with increased repressive measures under the Vargas government, following the restructuring of the political police and the enactment of the 1935 National Security Law.
Three months after her sisterâÂÂs deportation, in early 1936 â during the height of political repression against immigrants in Brazil â the political police raided a Jewish workersâ cultural center where the editorial office of the weekly Der Unhoib operated, arresting and deporting most of the foreigners present, including her father, aboard the ship Bagé on 16 April 1936. Reports indicate that Motel was assisted in France along with other expelled immigrants and later died in a concentration camp.
Orphaned in Brazil, Berta lived with Jewish families in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo between 1936 and 1940 under the care of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB). In São Paulo, she studied at the (FECAP), also attending a technical course in accounting. To fund her studies, she worked as a typist and secretary â roles that allowed her to move into a boarding house in 1940 and live independently from the PCB.
In 1946, Bertha Gleizer met Darcy Ribeiro at a Communist Party demonstration in São Paulo, marrying him in May 1948 when he joined the Indian Protection Service (SPI). Alongside him, she embarked on fieldwork among the Kadiwéu, Kaiowás, Terenas, and Ofaié-Xavantes indigenous groups in southern Mato Grosso. During this period, she started using the name Berta G. Ribeiro, dropping the surname Gleizer, which was not widely known. This change coincided with her concerns about facing a fate similar to that of her family members.
Ribeiro conducted extensive fieldwork, beginning between 1949 and 1951 when she started accompanying her husband. On this, Maria Stella Amorim wrote: âÂÂFrom her love for Darcy came her passion for anthropology,â and these journeys continued almost until the end of her life. Darcy RibeiroâÂÂs autobiographical work, Confessions, includes a passage briefly noting his wifeâÂÂs role in his life:
In 1950, Berta Ribeiro enrolled in a bachelorâÂÂs program in Geography and History at the University of the Federal District (UDF) â now Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ). She graduated in 1953 and began teaching Geography of Brazil at Lafayette Institute. In 1953, she started an internship in the Anthropology Division of the National Museum, initiating her studies to classify the feather adornments of the Urubu-Kaapor Indians, completing her teaching degree in Geography and History in 1954.
Ribeiro developed innovative methodological tools for classifying material culture collections, detailed in Bases para uma Classificação dos Adornos Plumários dos ÃÂndios do Brasil, published in 1957. She presented numerous works and organized cultural exhibitions in subsequent years, always focusing on indigenous culture. She received the João Ribeiro Award from the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) for the book Arte Plumária dos ÃÂndios Kaapor, co-authored with her husband. Between 1959 and 1960, she conducted bibliographic research for the article LÃÂnguas e Culturas IndÃÂgenas no Brasil and the book Os ÃÂndios e a Civilização by Darcy Ribeiro.
Following the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, Berta Ribeiro and her husband went into exile in Uruguay. She worked on bibliographic research and translation revisions for the book series Estudos de Antropologia da Civilização and the bibliographic and statistical survey for A Universidade Necessária, both by Darcy Ribeiro. The couple returned to Brazil in 1968, but Darcy was imprisoned for eight months at the Santa Cruz Fortress in Niterói. During this period, Bertha corresponded with intellectuals and public figures regarding his situation, contributing to efforts that led to his release. After another arrest warrant from the military regime, the couple went into a second exile in 1969, first to Venezuela, then from 1970 to 1974 in Chile and Peru. In Lima, Berta conducted research on family structure and socialization in a workshop coordinated by Professor Violeta Sara Lafosse, gathering data for her dissertation Crianças Trabalhadoras â Trabalho e Escolaridade de Menores em Lima.
In 1974, back in Brazil, she separated from her husband and, the following year, provided consultancy for the development of the Ethnological and Indigenous Documentation Center at the former Rio de Janeiro Indigenous Museum, directed by Carlos de Araújo Moreira Neto. In 1975, she took on the role of assistant director at publisher. In 1976, she interned in the ethnology and ethnography section of the Anthropology Department at the National Museum and worked as a researcher on the project Etnografia e Emprego Social da Tecnologia IndÃÂgena e Popular, coordinated by Maria HeloÃÂsa Fenelón Costa. In 1977, she became a Level B Researcher at the National Research Council (CNPq). She visited various indigenous villages in the Upper and Middle Xingu and in Ceará. Between 1978 and 1979, she participated in the and the campaign for the demarcation of indigenous lands, coordinated by the (CIMI).
In 1978, while in the Upper Rio Negro region studying indigenous weaving, the anthropologist learned that two indigenous individuals had written the mythology of the , encouraged earlier by a priest from the Salesian Mission in São Gabriel da Cachoeira to transcribe these narratives. During her time there, when the originals were returned by a publisher, Ribeiro took an interest in the project and assisted father and son â Umúsin Panlõn Kumu (Firmiano Lana) and Tolamãn Kenhirà(Luis Lana) â in revising the text for publication in 1980 as the book ', forging a partnership with the Lana family that lasted until the end of her life. Her publications and discourse consistently reflected her special regard for the Desana among all the indigenous groups she encountered.
In the early 1980s, in Rio de Janeiro, she organized the exhibition Indians of the Black Waters, likely her first as a curator. This exhibition, along with those that followed, focused on aspects of Indigenous life and Amazonian ecological themes. Similarly, the exhibitions Brasilidades at in 1998 and Amazônia Urgente in 1990, accompanied by her homonymous book, were presented at multiple venues, including the Carioca Station in Rio de Janeiro, the São Paulo Cultural Center, BrasÃÂlia, and the in Belém.
In 1980, she defended her doctorate at the University of São Paulo (USP) under the guidance of Professor Amadeu José Duarte Lanna. Her thesis, A Civilização da Palha: A Arte do Trançado dos ÃÂndios do Brasil, examined Indigenous basketry from the Upper Xingu and Upper Rio Negro, analyzing its technological, productive, and aesthetic aspects. The study included a comparative analysis of artistic production, highlighting the exchange system between these regions.
Between 1980 and 1981, she amassed an extensive collection of artifacts, drawings, photographs, and samples of vegetable specimens, clay, and dye. She documented techniques of spinning, weaving, interlaced weaving (filé), and the use of dyes and yarn among the Kayabi, Juruna, , Ikpeng, and Yawalapiti, contributing them to the National Museum's collection.
Between 1982 and 1983, she began developing and coordinating the journal Suma Etnológica Brasileira, and in 1984, she took over as general coordinator of its editorial board, with her ex-husband Darcy Ribeiro as editor. Also in 1983, she published O ÃÂndio na História do Brasil, a collection edited by Jayme Pinsky aimed at former high school and university students, divided into two parts: the first presenting indigenous peoples in Brazilian history from colonization to the late 20th century, and the second addressing their contributions to Brazilian culture.
She served as an advisor to the National Indigenous People Foundation (FUNAI) and head of museology at the same institution in 1985, as well as a visiting professor in the masterâÂÂs program at the School of Fine Arts (EBA). In 1988, she secured a position through a competitive exam as a Level 1 Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department of the National Museum, leaving the Indigenous Museum, and that same year published the Dicionário do Artesanato IndÃÂgena, a reference work in ethnomuseology where she described and analyzed various objects of indigenous material culture, classifying them by technique, raw material, and form. In 1989, she published Indigenous Arte IndÃÂgena, Linguagem Visual, which explored the aesthetic expressions of Brazilian Indigenous peoples through specific case studies, as noted in the preface. Her 1991 book, O ÃÂndio na Cultura Brasileira, addressed Indigenous contributions to Brazilian culture in areas such as botany, zoology, material culture, art, and language.
In 1994, she organized a project for cartoons to be part of a film series titled Mito e Morte no Amazonas, based on legends from the book Antes o Mundo Não Existia, comprising the short films: ', Bali Bó, and O Começo Antes do Começo â of the three, only the first was completed by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where she was a faculty member. In her final book, Os ÃÂndios das ÃÂguas Pretas, published in 1995, she addressed topics related to ecology and material culture, aiming, in her own words, âÂÂto provoke reflection on the creativity of indigenous cultures, the ecological knowledge of the Indian, and the Brazilian indigenous legacy passed down to millions of rural inhabitants.âÂÂ
Ribeiro made her work the purpose of her life, as she told her friend Maria Stella Amorim:
Due to a cancerous tumor, she fell into a coma in 1995. The following year, she retired due to the advanced stage of the illness, dying on 17 November 1997 at age 73, nine months after the death of her ex-husband.
When not in the field, Ribeiro retreated to her office in her Copacabana apartment in Rio de Janeiro, where she used a typewriter to draft articles, books, and letters, later adopting email. Her apartment shelves reflected her acquisitions, exchanges, and a body of work that included nine published books and over forty articles, as well as a personal collection of approximately 368 items gathered over more than forty years of ethnographic research across various indigenous communities in BrazilâÂÂs interior since the 1950s, with contributions from Darcy Ribeiro and anthropologist Eduardo Galvão â intended to support the establishment of a Museum of Indigenous Peoples in BrasÃÂlia, now the . Donated by Darcy Ribeiro in 1995, these objects were officially incorporated into the institutionâÂÂs permanent collection in April 2020 during BrasÃÂliaâÂÂs 60th-anniversary celebrations, 33 years after the museumâÂÂs construction.
Ribeiro experienced the loss of her family due to antisemitism in Romania and political repression under Brazilian dictatorships. Later, she engaged in advocacy for cultural diversity and indigenous rights. She worked as a museum collection curator and organized exhibitions on Indigenous topics. Her contributions to contemporary anthropology included a focus on material culture, encompassing objects and artifacts produced by Indigenous peoples. She collaborated with Firmiano Lana and his son Luis Lana on the publication of Antes o Mundo Não Existia, a mythology book written and illustrated by Indigenous individuals, published in 1980 and later translated into Spanish and Italian.
She collected material goods from the Indigenous groups she studied, a practice that extended to donations to institutions such as the Paraense EmÃÂlio Goeldi Museum, which received a significant collection from her. Institutionally, she was affiliated with the Indigenous Museum and the National Museum, working as a researcher and curator of ethnographic collections. As a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, she taught postgraduate courses in art history on âÂÂIndigenous Art in Brazilâ and âÂÂMaterial Culture and Ethnic Art,â guiding students in her areas of expertise. She also published museological studies and supported their role in public education and the Indigenous cause, despite their limited recognition in academic circles.
In the anthropology of art, she examined the symbolism of , identifying connections with cosmology in ritual patterns, mythology, and warrior activities. She approached art and material culture as expressions of Indigenous alterity, placing them alongside ethnological topics such as kinship, social relations, and religion.
Brief list:
On 14 August 1995, the then Minister of Science and Technology presented Berta Ribeiro with the National Order of Scientific Merit at her residence in Rio de Janeiro due to her illness. The ceremony took place in the presence of architect Oscar Niemeyer and her ex-husband Darcy Ribeiro. The Medal of Commandery, conferred by the Brazilian Government, acknowledged her work in anthropological studies and her production of scientific knowledge. During the event, Berta asked the minister to support the opening of the Museum of Indigenous Peoples in BrasÃÂlia, to which she planned to donate her personal collection.
At the 2nd edition of the Prêmio Escritas Sociais: Diversidades Culturais, held by the Social Sciences course at the Federal University of Tocantins (UFT) in 2017, she was honored for her contributions to cultural diversity, a recurring theme in her research among BrazilâÂÂs indigenous peoples.
In 2022, on International WomenâÂÂs Day, the Technical Reserve "Berta Ribeiro" was named in her honor at the Indigenous Museum (MI) in Rio de Janeiro where she coordinated the museology sector and cataloged most of the collectionâÂÂs items until the 1980s.
Bertha RibeiroâÂÂs work is referenced by researchers and scholars in museology and anthropology globally. Publications like Bases para uma Classificação dos Adornos Plumários dos ÃÂndios do Brasil, the volumes of the Suma Etnológica Brasileira, and the Dicionário do Artesanato IndÃÂgena provide methodological and classificatory frameworks for material culture research and ethnographic museum documentation, based on tools she developed for studying material culture.
During her 27-year marriage to Darcy Ribeiro, Bertha Ribeiro contributed to the development of his works by revising, translating, and organizing numerous letters and documents from his professional life. These efforts supported the creation of the Darcy Ribeiro Foundation (Fundar), an archive that includes the documentary collections and libraries of both anthropologists. The foundation was established following DarcyâÂÂs intent to preserve his intellectual legacy beyond his political career.
Berta RibeiroâÂÂs personal collection, alongside that of her former spouse, resides in a library within the at the University of BrasÃÂlia. This collection encompasses approximately 30,000 volumes of documents, amassed over more than five decades of wide-ranging work across multiple fields of knowledge. It includes two extensive, complementary archives featuring textual, iconographic, filmographic, and audio materials, which document not only the cultural and scientific contributions of their creators but also the expressions, memories, and histories of communities that have influenced Brazilian and Latin American society. The collections of Darcy and Berta Ribeiro, spanning various media, reflect their lifelong individual and joint efforts in research and publication within the realms of ethnology, anthropology, culture, and politics.
List of the anthropologistâÂÂs publications, compiled by researcher Lucia Hussak van Velthen: