Machi Shaman

Machi Shaman

2016 Featuring Machi Mapuche Juan Curaqueo.

In Chile's Mapuche culture, the Machi Shaman is a two-spirit who recognizes the gender fluidity of the foye tree which has medicinal qualities and hermaphroditic flowers.

To Mapuche shamans, or machi, the foye tree is important for its medicinal qualities and hermaphroditic flowers, which reflect the gender-shifting components of machi healing practices. Framed by their cultural constructions of gender and identity, the Chilean state stigmatizes the machi as witches and sexual deviants. But shamans use paradoxical discourses about gender to legitimatize themselves as healers and, at the same time, as modern men and women; the tree's political use also serves as a symbol of resistance to national ideologies; and other aspects of these rich traditions.

Within a Western and Christian ideological framework, individuals who identify as a third gender are often thought of as part of the LGBTQ community. This classification actually distorts the concept of a third gender and reflects a culture that historically recognizes only two genders based on sex assigned at birth - male or female – and anyone acting outside of the cultural norms for their sex may be classified as homosexual, gender queer, or transgender, among other classifications. In societies that recognize a third gender, the gender classification is not based on sexual identity, but rather on gender identity and spirituality. Individuals who identify with a cultural third gender are, in fact, acting within their gender/sex norm.

https://nhm.org/stories/beyond-gender-indigenous-perspectives-mapuche

https://tarpits.org/stories/beyond-gender-indigenous-perspectives-mapuche

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW1Z54a26Bc&t=47s

LW1Z54a26Bc