Machi healing and Mapuche religious revitalization after the 2010 earthquake

Record summary

Contemporary Mapuche machi practice involves healing, medicinal plants known as lawen, ritual song, dreams, community authority, and relationships among human, ancestral, and nonhuman beings. Scholarship and public controversies after the 2010 earthquake examine revitalization, land conflict, biomedical encounters, prison conditions, and the protection of Indigenous knowledge. This is a comparison lead for spirit communication and healing systems, but it should not be reduced to “shamanism” or occultism. Researchers need sources by Mapuche scholars and communities, and must distinguish ritual efficacy claims from clinical or historical evidence.