Indigenous heritage and healing nostalgia: Mapuche’s lof in Rehue Romopulli, Port Saavedra, Chile

Abstract

This article discusses how various agents influence the configuration of Indigenous emotions and how a healing nostalgia emerges, looking forward to a supposed ‘golden age’ that seeks to heal internal social problems, while at the same time symbolically repairing the ‘immemorial’ Indigenous conflict with the Chilean State and its society. It takes as its starting point the discussion initiated by Laurajane Smith and Gary Campbell concerning nostalgia in the field of heritage, and traces that emotion through ethnographies and collaborative cartographies with Indigenous Mapuches of the Rehue Romopulli, in the Araucanía Region of Chile.

Keywords:

• Heritage
• Indigenous
• nostalgia
• emotion
• recognition
• Mapuche

Notes

1. The rehue or rewe is the religious, political and social axis of the Mapuches. It is simultaneously a deity, a physical space, a symbolic object and a political and social structure. Visually it is usually a thick tree trunk staggered and nailed to the ground, surrounded by branches from the sacred Mapuche tree called canelo. The physical space where the rehue is nailed is usually used for the most important rituals: machitún, guillatún and the we tripantu (New Year, austral winter solstice). Likewise, the rehue represents the territory inhabited by groups of families or lof (basic form of Mapuche social organisation) that share it.

2. The guillatún is the most important of the sacred ritual ceremonies of the Mapuche people. This ritual is organised by each rehue and directed by a ngenpin (a cultural, political and religious guide). It is destined to pray for the well-being and unity of the communities and to give thanks for the benefits received. It lasts between two and four days and is performed every two, three, or four years, depending on the needs of each rehue.