Mythilogies of the Selk’nam (Onawo) Tribe

“Our mythology is rich.” “Everything in our world—plants and animals, the sun and stars—has a voice. On our map of the universe, we called the East ‘the space without time’ ”—the realm of the unknown. “We had a Paleolithic skill set yet a boundless imagination. They both existed with a high degree of social conformity. Long after we dispersed, we preserved our beliefs.” He added, “One precious thing, to me, about the language is its vocabulary of words for love. They change according to the age, sex, and kinship of the speakers and the nature of the emotion.

In the Selk’nam mythology, the cosmos is divided in four sho’on or infinite skies, which represent the four cardinal directions:

Kamuk: Northern sky.
Kéikruk: Southern sky.
Wintek: Eastern sky. It is considered the most important of the four sho’on, being the residence of Temáukel and source of all that exists.
Kenénik: Western sky.

Each shó’on is associated to one of the seasons. Kamuk symbolizes the spring and summer, Kéikruk symbolizes the winter, Kenénik symbolizes the autumn and, finally, Wintek symbolizes all the seasons and, possibly, even the time.

History books said the Selk’nam, inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America, were extinct but Chile may be about to legally recognize their descendants. One of José Vásquez Chogue’s enduring childhood memories is that of his grandfather on the doorstep of his home in the Chilean capital, Santiago, staring at the night sky. “He would always face south,” Vásquez recalled. “He would point out the Southern Cross and show me the stars which represent our ancestors.” The older man had grown up on a frozen and remote island in Patagonia and was a member of the Selk’nam tribe. But Chilean history books had declared the people extinct. When José, captivated by the anthropological displays of Chile’s National History Museum, tried to explain his bloodline to a member of staff he was met with derision. “I told him that they were my people, but he didn’t believe me. We were taught at school that all our brothers were all dead.”

The Selk’nam, also known as the Onawo or Ona people, are an indigenous people in the Patagonian region of southern Argentina and Chile, including the Tierra del Fuego islands. They were one of the last native groups in South America to be encountered by migrant Europeans in the late 19th century. In the mid-19th century, there were about 4000 Selk’nam; by 1919 there were 297, and by 1930 just over 100. While the Selk’nam are closely associated with living in the northeastern area of Tierra del Fuego, they are believed to have originated as a people on the mainland. Thousands of years ago, they migrated by canoe across the Strait of Magellan. Their territory in the early Holocene probably ranged as far as the Cerro Benítez area of the Cerro Toro mountain range in Chile.

Central to the Selk’nam myths was “a belief that humans must learn to share land with the native fauna; for the Selk’nam, everything and everyone comes from and eventually returns to the land, even if the outward form changes”. This reflects concepts of rebirth, circularity and reciprocity. Furthermore, he describes their conviction that “on death, their ancestors’ spirits passed into the surrounding landscape of mountains, lakes and rivers, or into the bodies of wild creatures”. Thus, what had been characterized as the “land of death” was in many ways the opposite, its various components serving as the sites of rebirth/reincarnation and giving new life to the souls of the deceased.

The Selk’nam, also known as the Ona or Onawo, lived in the Patagonian region of southern Argentina and Chile including the Tierra del Fuego islands. They were one of the last native groups in South America to be reached by Westerners, in the late 19th century, when the Chilean and Argentine governments began efforts to explore Tierra del Fuego (the “land of fire,” named by early European explorers observing smoke from Selk’nam fires). The Selk’nam are considered extinct as a tribe. They spoke a Chon language, and the last speaker, Joubert Yanten Gomez, who called himself by the Selkn’nam name Keyuk, died in 1974. The cultural heritage of the Selk’nam had all but disappeared.

“The Selk’nam people are not extinct, they are currently in a process of cultural reappropriation and recreation, and they have the right to reconstruct their own [historical] memory,” said Karla Rubilar, the minister of social development. If, in the months ahead, the government of Gabriel Boric legally recognizes the Selk’nam, they could be eligible for land and legislative representation. But more important for Vásquez would be the recognition of the crimes committed against his ancestors. “It’s important that the history of our people and the truth come to light, so people know what happened to the Selk’nam and the other Indigenous peoples in Chile,” he says.

The Selk’nam people live in what is now known as Argentina and Chile. The indigenous population flourished on Tierra del Fuego, which would be discovered by Ferdinand Magellan in the early 1500s. As colonization grew, indigenous communities worldwide were under constant threat. From communities that wanted to keep their land and valuables to people who wanted control of their culture, native populations faced threats to their way of life that would ultimately change the way their communities had flourished. European colonists came to Tierra del Fuego, desperate for the resources and gold that could be found there. During the late 1800s, Ramón Lista, an Argentinian soldier, explored the Selk’nam people’s territory, angered at their inhabitance of the land, and treated them as less than human after shooting over twenty Selk’nam men. He returned to Tierra del Fuego with more soldiers, continuing to kill Selk’nam men, enslaving women and children, and taking children away from their families. Ramón Lista and the other perpetrators were unable and unwilling to see the deep history of tradition and beauty that lived within Tierra del Fuego, and, disregarding the Selk’nam people in the same way, took part in a genocide that would enslave and murder thousands of the Selk’nam people, and would eventually contribute to the declared extinction of the Selk’nam tribe.

The Selk’nam had arrived there more than ten thousand years ago as a result of our species’ great adventure across the planet, a journey of at least 60,000 years that started at East Africa Rift Valley and along which humans spread throughout and found there the last land – finis terrae – the last continental frontier. The invasion cost the Selk’nam their land and the freedom of their nomadic culture, but at the same time they realized that it was much easier to hunt a domesticated sheep than a wild guanaco. This, of course, would not be accepted by the farmers’ culture, who saw in private property the leap to progress – although it cannot be proved that such a lifestyle had brought us closer to happiness.

The Selk’nam (also known as the Ona) inhabited the largest island of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, the Isla Grande. The population of the Selk’nam and their neighbors the Haush (Mánekenka), who lived in the southeastern tip of the island and had a similar culture, was estimated by Martin Gusinde (1931) at approximately four thousand in 1880. During the final decades of the nineteenth century most of the Indians either were slaughtered by the white colonizers or died of diseases brought by them. In 1919 Gusinde (1931) counted 279 Selk’nam and Haush. Fifteen years later, following several epidemics, there were fewer than one hundred. When this author first went to Tierra del Fuego in 1965 there were about fifteen Selk’nam and Haush, including the mestizos. In 1985 there were four, all of whom spoke fluent Spanish and three of whom also had some knowledge of the Selk’nam language. This author had the privilege of working, as an ethnologist, with the last woman shaman, Lola Kiepja, who died October 9, 1966, and during the years that followed with many of the remaining Selk’nam.