An insight into the life of a Wichí shaman

Abstract

The author returns to Wichì in 2010: the last shamans she met in the early 1980s died between 2002 and 2003, and there are only a few 'helpers' left with their reduced practises and an old Hayawé who practises in solitude and isolation. Since the 1990s, the new Pentecostal Christianities, the Anglican Church and the charismatic sects have made shamans a liminal entity, an object of discredit and mistrust. While the sons have gradually abandoned the shamanic profession of their fathers, the grandchildren are showing a renewed interest in these figures. In an attempt to quench the thirst for knowledge of the new generations, the author reconstructs the initiation path of the Hayawé A.D. on the basis of interviews and stories collected during an ethnographic study conducted in 1980.