#fuegians

[linkfinds]

🎵 DOO DOO DOO DOO! ♪

[desimonewayland]

Selk'nam bodypainting of Tierra del Fuego.

[baddreamland]

The Lost Tribes of Tierra Del Fuego

“Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago at South America’s southernmost tip, shared by Chile and Argentina. It’s known for its dramatic landscape of snowy mountains, glaciers, tundra and wind-sculpted trees. Its main island, Isla Grande, is home to the Argentine resort town of Ushuaia. Sometimes called “the End of the World,” Ushuaia is a gateway to the region and Antarctica to the south.”

“A German missionary sent to Tierra del Fuego in 1919 by his congregation, Martin Gusinde was a major Americanist and ethnographer from the first half of the twentieth century. While his mission was ostensibly to convert the native peoples among whom he lived, Gusinde did just the opposite, eventually becoming one of the first Westerners ever to be initiated into the various sacred rites of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego. In the course of four sojourns made between 1919 and 1924, from the canals of Western Patagonia to the great island of Tierra del Fuego, he learned and wrote about the Kawésqar, Yamana, and Selk’nam peoples. Gradually, the missionary became an anthropologist.

Fascinated by what he saw, Gusinde took more than one thousand photographs, all produced using a portable darkroom. Gusinde captured some truly extraordinary images that his contemporaries were unable to: feather-clad bodies sporting high headdresses made of bark, wrapped up in guanaco furs, or entirely covered with ritual paint, populating a landscape battered by wind, rain, and snow—the heart of a natural world that Darwin had celebrated, not long before, for its wildness. A dazzling visual experience, Gusinde’s photographs are a monument to the memory of the Tierra del Fuego people as well as an exceptional anthropological document.”

1.Ulen is a clown­like male spirit, whose role is to entertain the audience of the Selk’nam Hain ceremony, 1923

2. A Yincihaua spirit of the Kawésqar people painted white with ground bones, 1918–1924

[fyeah-history]

Yaghan people, 1883 The Yaghan, also called Yagán, Yámana, Yamana, or Tequenica, are the indigenous peoples of the Southern Cone, who are regarded as the southernmost peoples in the world. Their traditional territory includes the islands south of Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego extending their presence into Cape Horn.

They were known as Fuegians by the English-speaking world, but the term is nowadays avoided as it can refer to any of the indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego. Some are reputed to still speak the Yaghan language, which is considered to be a language isolate; however, most speak Spanish. The Yaghan were traditionally nomads, who traveled by canoes between islands to collect food. The men hunted sea lions while the women dove to collect shellfish.