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This series contains information about project planning, administration, correspondence for the two trips taken by Andriy Nahachewsky to Ukrainian Communities in Brazil. This series includes the collector’s fieldnotes, drafts of databases, information about the three other researchers during the first trip, Brazilian supporters, some of the interviewees as individuals, and the contexts for travel and conducting the fieldwork.

This series contains copies of selected materials from the fieldtrips that were combined, edited, and annotated for presentations in Brazil itself, as well as later presentations and publications based on these trips. Nahachewsky made a number of edited videos on specific topics in the form of DVDs while based in Prudentópolis, distributing them to specific relevant interviewees and community members. He gave public presentations in Prudentópolis, in Irati, and several times in Curitiba, prepared with Photoshop slideshows. Presentations based on the trip were also made on various specific topics in Canada and elsewhere in the following years. Dedicated subseries contain information on the development of the exhibit Oi! Ukrainians in Brazil in Farms and Cities (see also the Nahachewsky collection containing research and publications), as well as editorial drafts and communication related to the book Ukraintsi Brazylii / Os Ucranianos do Brasil / Ukrainians in Brazil (Maryna Hrymych, Andriy Nahachewsky, Serge Cipko, and Olga Nadia Kalko, eds., Kyiv: Duliby, 2011).

This series contains digital and hard copies of printed materials brought from Brazil and which cover general themes about Ukrainians, about Brazil, or about Ukrainian topics. If a publication deals very specifically with the focused topic of one of the other series, it is located there, so a booklet of Easter Haivky, for example, will be placed in the series on Calendar Customs. This series includes copies of newspapers, book and chapter publications, manuscripts, videos, audio files, phonograph labels, printed ephemera, and records of Brazilian-based exhibits. The texts are in Ukrainian or Portuguese, and occasionally in English. Most of these publications are written in Brazil itself, though others were created elsewhere and brought into Brazilian collections.

This series contains photographs, maps and other information about specific locations relevant to the Ukrainian community in Brazil. A subseries is dedicated to landscapes and cityscapes, providing a general sense of the physical appearance of those places. If an item deals with a particular public location that is not specifically associated with Ukrainian cultural life, such as a big cathedral in a city, then it is placed in the series on Public Spaces below. The collected fieldwork on various specific folkloric traditions reveals that Ukrainian Brazilian culture has had strong regional diversity as it became consolidated over the 20th century, and this diversity continues to some degree. A separate subseries of maps in this series contains general and detailed, contemporary and historical maps of Brazil, Paraná specifically, and especially the Municipio of Prudentópolis. Many of the maps are reproduced by photography, and thus divided in segments.

This series contains photographs and other documents of specific public spaces in Brazil, not specifically associated with Ukrainian cultural life, but part of the environment of the Ukrainian immigrants and descendentes.

This series contains documentation of performing arts of the Ukrainian communities in Brazil. A great deal of material focuses on dance, including staged Ukrainian dance, many of the approximately 24 organized groups in the country at the time of the fieldwork, and their histories. Photographs, concert programmes, interviews, and video recordings document this growing field of activity. A separate subseries is dedicated to participatory dance, social dances brought by the immigrants to Brazil and enjoyed at weddings, parties, and other celebrations in their new communities. This series also includes recordings, photographs, and other forms of documentation of musical life, musical instruments, and musicians currently active and historically. A separate subseries is reserved for other performing arts, primarily theatre and drama.

The rich calendar cycle of the Ukrainian communities in Brazil retain a strong connection with the church calendar. They needed to adapt in some ways to the new demographic situation, the warmer climate of the semi-tropics, and to the reversal of the seasons in the southern hemisphere. This series contains interview descriptions as well as participant observation records of Christmas, lent, Easter, Provody, Kupalo, and other calendar cycle events. The focus here is on community and vernacular views rather than clerical perspectives or those of leaders of secular organizations. Researchers may find related materials in the adjoining series on Organized Life, as well as on Church life.

This series contains primarily interview descriptions as well as participant observation recordings of birth, baptism, weddings, and funerary traditions. The series is particularly strong for descriptions of weddings within living memory in various “regions” of Ukrainian Brazil. The focus here is on community and vernacular views rather than clerical perspectives or those of leaders of secular organizations. Researchers may find related materials in the adjoining series on Organized Life, as well as on Church life.

This series deals with ritual and ceremonial life that does not fall neatly into the calendar of life cycle. Weekly and irregularly observed traditions fall into this category.

This series contains information on immigration history to Brazil, with a strong focus on Ukrainian immigration. Some interviews and documents describe particular migration stories, and others provide more generalized narratives. Early years in the cities and in the colonias predominate, though historical and family developments throughout the 20th centuries are included, such as secondary migration into northwest Paraná, the anti-ethnic tension in the period of World War Two, later waves of immigration, and relations with Ukraine. A subseries devoted to Ethnic Public Monuments focuses strongly on Ukrainian commemorations, but include those of neighbouring ethnic groups. Items produced as Ukrainian national symbols are collected into a separate subseries, strongly connected with materials in the series on Organized Life and on the Ukrainian churches. The subseries on Museums contains documentation of the physical structures of the museums, and overviews of their collections and presentation. If a photograph or other document focuses on a particular museum object, it is placed in the series on Settlements, Agriculture, Homelife, Organized Life, or Church Life, as most relevant. A smaller subseries is devoted to Education, and particularly Ukrainian educational materials and activities in Brazil. Documentation about general Brazilian historical culture, treated self-consciously as “heritage” is also found here (materials about old houses, historic transport, pioneering farming practices for example).

This series contains materials associated with agriculture, agricultural practices, and tools, including contemporary agriculture, as well as remnants and remembrances of practices from the past. The idea of agriculture is treated broadly here, and this series includes related traditional activities and crafts such as animal husbandry, textile making, lumbering, hunting, stonework, shoemaking, barrel making, and others. Information specifically about plants and animals is collected in a special subseries.

This series collects information from interviews and other sources about the Ukrainian language in Brazil. Numerous researchers and publications are dedicated to the retention and promotion of the Ukrainian language in Brazil, as well as linguistic connections with 19th century dialects and influences from Portuguese. This series includes a copy of the important linguistic field recordings of Dr. Wolodymyr Kulczynskyj. Audio examples of current language use can be found in the approximately 300 interview recordings throughout this collection.

This series contains documentation of organized community life in Ukrainian Brazilian communities. One subseries is organized to focus on secular organizations, including SUBraz, TPUK, various dance groups, choirs, and an agricultural cooperative. A second subseries is devoted to religious organizations, with a focus on Eparchial centres, convents, seminaries, and other institutions organized within the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Brazil. A smaller portion of this subseries documents the Ukrainian Orthodox church and its resources. Commercial Activities are also included in this series, recording evidence of Ukrainian-oriented stores, private enterprises, and products for sale.

This series contains documentation of organized community life in Ukrainian Brazilian communities. One subseries is organized to focus on secular organizations, including SUBraz, TPUK, various dance groups, choirs, and an agricultural cooperative. A second subseries is devoted to religious organizations, with a focus on Eparchial centres, convents, seminaries, and other institutions organized within the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Brazil. A smaller portion of this subseries documents the Ukrainian Orthodox church and its resources. Commercial Activities are also included in this series, recording evidence of Ukrainian-oriented stores, private enterprises, and products for sale.

This extensive series captures scenes from cemeteries, most of them adjacent to specific Ukrainian churches. Many photographs document individual grave markers, potentially useful for research on the historical changes in funerary material culture and in genealogical studies.

This series has a strong focus on church architecture, with many photo essays documenting the current form of dozens of particular churches, their interiors, exteriors, and churchyards. A second strong focus is on icons, holy pictures, and religious art. A great many of the approximately 240 Ukrainian churches in Brazil were built after the 1960s, and many have been (re)painted since that time. Numerous local and international iconographers and painters have been engaged to paint them, many with strong personal styles and diverse skill levels. Numerous other holy pictures are displayed in houses, public facilities, museums, and in the artists’ studios. During the fieldwork, an explicit research interest developed in the various iconographers and painters, with dedicated interviews in several cases. This series also assembles historic information and participant observation of religious life from parishioners’ perspectives. Video recordings include church services and holiday celebrations. This series overlaps closely with the series on Calendar and Life Cycle celebrations, and with the series on organized life.

This series assembles the variety of information on Ukrainian Brazilian culture that has been assembled by Andriy Nahachewsky after May 2010, when he returned to Canada.

Artifacts are assembled into a special series for logistical purposes. Items include ethnic pop art and souvenir objects, as well as occasional vernacular culture artifacts.

This series is reserved for documents, photos, recordings which either don’t fit well into previous series, or seem relevant but which are unidentified.

This collection contains the results of two ethnographic trips to the Ukrainian communities in Brazil by Andriy Nahachewsky. The first trip took place from 4 May to 26 May 2009, and included Andriy Nahachewsky, Serge Cipko, John C. Lehr, and Maryna Hrymych. This was the first trip to Brazil for each of the participants, though they each had strong credentials in their disciplines and in fieldwork more generally. Thus the project goal was to cast a wide net for general orientation into the historical and contemporary life of the Ukrainian communities there. Each researcher also had specific personal goals. The trip included visits to Curitiba, Prudentópolis and several rural communities nearby, Craveiro in Santa Catarina, São Paulo, Brasília, and Foz do Iguaçu. The agenda included visits to an agricultural cooperative, meetings with diplomats and organizational representatives, and diverse individuals who could speak about life in their communities. Photographs by Hrymych, Lehr, and Cipko are also accessioned into the BMUFA and located in their own respective collections.

The second trip was undertaken by Andriy Nahachewsky, for 6 months from 14 November 2009 to 13 May 2010. The goal of the project was to continue the first exploratory fieldtrip, intensifying and expanding it. The project had a strong diachronic focus, documenting change in cultural traditions, to understand better how Ukrainian cultural content, rooted in 19th century rural traditions in western Ukraine, became transplanted, disappeared, adapted, and sometimes newly created in its diaspora setting in the Brazilian context. The intent was to be able to compare these processes with similar ones known from the Ukrainian Canadian context, as well as culture in western Ukraine itself, which also changed significantly over the 20th century: One cultural root, and three branches evolving on three continents over 120 years.

Another aspect of the fieldtrip was connected with Nahachewsky’s earlier “Local Culture and Diversity on the Prairies” project, which strove to provide documentation about regional differences in traditional Ukrainian culture in the Canadian setting. This аspect of the project was to try trace local differences in Brazilian culture in a similar way. Some of these regional differences were probably most clear in past decades. A third aspect was more synchronic, aimed to document contemporary life. Connected with this, the Brazil trip involved travelling to some 65 communities in the states of Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo, the main Ukrainian settlement areas in Brazil. The project involved recording some 300 audio interviews, 53 hours of video recordings of contemporary events, 14,000 photographs, and gathering many publications and manuscripts (in hard copy and reproduced digitally), as well as diverse artifacts. The overall focus in subject matter was broad, including material culture (farming practices, folk arts), customs (calendar holidays, weddings, funerals, etc) and performing arts (music, dance). Special foci developed for dance materials, religious images, church architecture, cemeteries, music, and weddings, because of Nahachewsky’s research background, opportunities, and experiences as the fieldwork proceeded. The trips were both funded by the Huculak Chair and the Kule Folklore Centre (for the first trip: Nahachewsky, Hrymych, and various shared expenses). During both trips, the hosts in the home base in Prudentópolis, as well as other locations in Brazil, were very warm and hospitable, open, and generous. A copy of the digital photo, audio, and video fieldwork materials was deposited in the Museu do Milênio in Prudentópolis.