How I lost a museum but gained a family

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Aparecida Vilaça is a Brazilian anthropologist who’s spent years in the Amazon recording the legends, songs and stories of Brazil’s indigenous Wari’ people. Many of them were told by the elderly storyteller, Paleto. He ended up becoming Aparecida’s Wari’ ‘father’ – his own daughter had been killed years before during raids on the Wari’ territories. Aparecida’s original recordings of Paleto were held in Rio de Janeiro in the Indigenous Language collection at the National Museum but were destroyed when the Museum burned down last year. Outlook's Maryam Maruf reports. Beatriz Hörmanseder is a paleontologist in Brazil’s National Museum. She lost all her work in the fire that tore through the building. She was devastated afterwards, but came up with a unique way to cope with the trauma of its loss. She got a tattoo of the building's facade and set up a project where other recovering students and staff could do the same. Jeff Lieberman is a retired lawyer from America and was truly able to understand the power of nature when he came too close for comfort with a tornado. Jeff has been fascinated by tornados since childhood and tells Jonny Dymond why he has spent a lifetime studying them, but also why you have to appreciate their power. Image: Aparecida Vilaça and Paleto Credit: Carlos Fausto