Mapuche oral shamanic biographies and performances —some of which take the form of “bibles” and involve shamanic literacies— play a central role in the production of indigenous history in southern Chile. In this article, I explain how and why a mixed-race Mapuche shaman charged me with writing about her life and practice in the form of such a “bible”. This book would become a ritual object and a means of storing her shamanic power by textualizing it, thereby allowing her to speak to a future audience. The realities and powers her “bible” stored could be extracted, transformed, circulated, and actualized for a variety of ends, even to bring about shamanic rebirth. Ultimately, I argue, through their use and interpretation of this kind of “bible”, Mapuche shamans expand academic notions of indigenous history and literacy.
Bacigalupo, A. M. (2016). Graphism, multitemporality and texts as objects of power in the biography of a Mapuche’s Machi in Chile. Revista Chilena De Antropología, (31). Retrieved from https://revistas.uchile.cl/index.php/RCA/article/view/40604
