Shamans of the foye tree : gender, power, and healing among Chilean Mapuche / Ana Mariella Bacigalupo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bacigalupo, Ana Mariella.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mapuche Indians--Rites and ceremonies.

Mapuche Indians--Government relations.

Indigenous peoples--Ecology--Chile.

Shamans--Chile.

Trees--Religious aspects.

Chile--Social life and customs.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (336 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Drawing on anthropologist Ana Mariella Bacigalupo's fifteen years of field research, Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power, and Healing among Chilean Mapuche is the first study to follow shamans' gender identities and performance in a variety of ritual, social, sexual, and political contexts. To Mapuche shamans, or machi, the foye tree is of special importance, not only for its medicinal qualities but also because of its hermaphroditic flowers, which reflect the gender-shifting components of machi healing practices. Framed by the cultural constructions of gender and identity, Bacigalupo's fascinating findings span the ways in which the Chilean state stigmatizes the machi as witches and sexual deviants; how shamans use paradoxical discourses about gender to legitimatize themselves as healers and, at the same time, as modern men and women; the tree's political use as a symbol of resistance to national ideologies; and other components of these rich traditions. The first comprehensive study on Mapuche shamans' gendered practices, Shamans of the Foye Tree offers new perspectives on this crucial intersection of spiritual, social, and political power.

Contents:

Introduction: The gendered realm of the foye tree

The ambiguous powers of machi : illness, awingkamiento, and the modernization of witchcraft

Gendered rituals for cosmic order : shamanic struggles for wholeness

Ritual gendered relationships : kinship, marriage, mastery, and machi modes of personhood

The struggle for Machi masculinity : colonial politics of gender, sexuality, and power

Machi as gendered symbols of tradition : national discourses and Mapuche resistance movements

The responses of male machi to homophobia : reinvention as priests, doctors, and spiritual warriors

Female machi : embodying tradition or contesting gender norms?

Representing the gendered identities of machi : paradoxes and conflicts.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [279]-306) and index.

ISBN:

0-292-79526-2

OCLC:

646761204