Mapuche struggles to obliterate dominant history: mythohistory, spiritual agency and shamanic historical consciousness in southern Chile

The biographical mythohistory of Rosa Kurin, an ethnically mixed Mapuche-German shaman in late-1800s southern Chile, illustrates a 'shamanic historical consciousness' that blurs the line between history and myth. This mixed genre mediates different memories of the past, challenging dominant Chilean history and creating alternative indigenous histories. Mapuche shamanic mythohistories are both linear and cyclical: historical figures become mythical characters and vice versa, with mythical events recurring in historical ones. By mythologizing shamans and outsiders, Mapuche prioritize spiritual over political agency and reverse colonial dynamics of subordination. For rural Mapuche, mythohistories convey agency, ethnic identity, and ontology, offering a means to decolonize history and mobilize politically.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The biographical mythohistory of Rosa Kurin, an ethnically mixed Mapuche-German shaman in southern Chile in the late 1800s, expresses a ‘shamanic historical consciousness’ that advances current debates over the dynamic relationship between history and myth and between indigenous and national history. Biographical mythohistory is a mixed genre that mediates among different memoralisations of the past to obliterate dominant Chilean history and to create alternative indigenous histories. Mapuche shamanic mythohistories are simultaneously linear and cyclical: historical personages are transformed into mythical characters and sometimes back again, and mythical happenings manifest themselves repeatedly in historical events. Mapuche people create mythohistories by mythologising such shamans and historical outsiders, prioritising spiritual agency over political agency and narratively reversing the usual colonial dynamics of subordination. Mythohistories are, for rural Mapuche, a means of conveying agency, ethnic identity and ontology. They also offer a way to decolonise Mapuche history and have the potential for political mobilisation.