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

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.