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The Drums' Many Lives: Stories of a Mapuche Shamanic Being in European Collections

Project description

Revitalising Mapuche storytelling traditions

The Mapuche tribe used a discursive and analytical genre, the gvxan (conversation), based on storytelling. According to their culture, stories of shamanic origins, like kulxug (drums), can bring newen (vital energy) back. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) programme, the DRUMS project will retell the stories of 25 Mapuche drums. It aims to reclaim their vital energy and re-conceive repatriation from the Mapuche perspective. It will also collectively analyse data about the drums with Mapuche communities during meetings in Southern Chile. It will trace their provenance, characterise their musealisation process, document their material identities, and produce storytelling that emphasises Mapuche traditional knowledge. The project is designed collaboratively with Mapuche communities and representatives engaged with repatriation.

Objective

Stories, like kulxug (drums), can bring newen (vital energy) back. This idea, of shamanic origin, is what guides this project's aims. Collaboratively conceived, this research engages with twenty-five Mapuche drums under European Museums' custody, aiming to retell their stories and, in so doing, reclaim their vital energy back home while reconceiving what repatriation may look like from the Mapuche perspective. In conversation with this perspective, this project will gather and analyze data about the drums, the most relevant mogen (living beings) in Mapuche shamanism. The objectives are (1) to trace the drums' provenance; (2) characterize the drums' musealization process; (3) document the drums' material identities; (4) collaboratively produce storytelling about the drums' lives, emphasizing the Mapuche traditional knowledge; and (5) re-conceptualize repatriation considering the stories' ability to reclaim vital energy.
This project was designed collaboratively with Mapuche communities and representatives engaged with repatriation. Its methodology combines social sciences and humanities methods with gvxan (conversation), a Mapuche discursive and analytical genre based on storytelling. First, archives, legislation, museum practices, and the drums' materiality will be studied using material culture, legal, anthropology, history, and archaeology methods. Then, all data will be collectively analyzed with Mapuche communities during territorial meetings in Southern Chile. This will result in the storytelling of the drums' lives and rethinking what repatriation might be in this case.
The research brings non-Western peoples' ontological self-determination to the fore, querying how repatriation has been practiced. As a result, while it deals with a priority issue for the Mapuche communities, it can impact the controversial condition in which matters of repatriation are currently debated in Europe.

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Net EU contribution
€ 203 464,32
Address
RAPENBURG 70
2311 EZ Leiden
Netherlands

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Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
No data