Thunder Shaman: Making History with Mapuche Spirits in Chile and Patagonia

Summary

The book Thunder Shaman describes the life and spiritual work of Francisca Kolipi, a Mapuche shaman who traveled through time and space as a thunder shaman mounted on a spirit horse. She gained power to conduct spiritual warfare against forestry companies, settlers, and other threats to her community. As a civilized shaman, she narrated the Mapuche people's attachment to sacred landscapes and created nonlinear histories in which Mapuche become history's spiritual victors. The work is both an academic text and a ritual object intended to act as a shamanic bible, embodying Francisca's power after her death in 1996. It shows how shamans are shaped by historical-political and ecological events while actively creating history through shamanic imaginaries.

Study at a glance

Abstract

As a "wild," drumming thunder shaman, a warrior mounted on her spirit horse, Francisca Kolipi's spirit traveled to other historical times and places, gaining the power and knowledge to conduct spiritual warfare against her community's enemies, including forestry companies and settlers. As a "civilized" shaman, Francisca narrated the Mapuche people's attachment to their local sacred landscapes, which are themselves imbued with shamanic power, and constructed nonlinear histories of intra- and interethnic relations that created a moral order in which Mapuche become history's spiritual victors. Thunder Shaman represents an extraordinary collaboration between Francisca Kolipi and anthropologist Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, who became Kolipi's "granddaughter," trusted helper, and agent in a mission of historical (re)construction and myth-making. The book describes Francisca's life, death, and expected rebirth, and shows how she remade history through multitemporal dreams, visions, and spirit possession, drawing on ancestral beings and forest spirits as historical agents to obliterate state ideologies and the colonialist usurpation of indigenous lands. Both an academic text and a powerful ritual object intended to be an agent in shamanic history, Thunder Shaman functions simultaneously as a shamanic "bible," embodying Francisca's power, will, and spirit long after her death in 1996, and an insightful study of shamanic historical consciousness, in which biography, spirituality, politics, ecology, and the past, present, and future are inextricably linked. It demonstrates how shamans are constituted by historical-political and ecological events, while they also actively create history itself through shamanic imaginaries and narrative forms