French to English Social Sciences Anthropology description of museum exhibition

What do you think this means in the following sentence?
'quant aux parures de plumes et aux masques spectaculaires d'Amazonie, ce sont des#emprunts# de corps et d'images gaits par les Indiens aux animaux et aux esprits, donc des moyens, en se rendant semblables a eux, de se faire accepter comme congeneres.'
I can't understand why it says that the Indians are making a loan to the animals and spirits by using their feathers etc, (- it would seem to be the other way round) but I may have misunderstood this.