Mysteries of the Jaguar Shamans of the Northwest Amazon by Robin Wright

Author:Robin Wright [Wright, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-4962-1122-4
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 2013-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

5

Mythscapes as Living Memories of the Ancestors

Ethnographic mapping shows that there is an extensive “sacred geography” in Baniwa-Kuripako-Wakuenai territory along the Northwest Amazon border of Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia that consists of important locations of northern Arawakan creation traditions. This includes waterfalls with petroglyphs and stone formations, sacred hills where humanity obtained food, the beginning of the universe at the Hipana rapids, first initiation rites at Ehnípan, the first death, and the beginning of shamanism. The ancestors are said to have left traces of their presence at these places as memories for their descendants (walimanai) of what they had created.

These sites can be understood as “portals to the sacred,” a concept that Vine Deloria used in speaking of Native North American sacred geography:

Such “portals” should not be viewed as limited in size or scale. Some may be large in their geographical extent while others are limited in size. Likewise, use of the portals concept must include the understanding that . . . they are not only positioned in geography but also positioned in time, such that they become sacred “time/spaces.” (Deloria in Taylor, ed. 2005: 1448)

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