Hi my grandson, what?re you looking for??. Close encounters with ?Owners of Nature? in the Argentine Chaco Qom/Toba world

PABLO WRIGHT

San Antonio de Areco

Conferencia; Conference Series ?Challenges of Life?. Conference 5: ?Nature as Challenge of Life?.; 2017

Universidad Nacional de San Martín

Conference Series ?Challenges of Life?Conference 5: ?Nature as Challenge of Life?Buenos Aires, September 05-08, 2017?Hi my grandson, what?re you looking for??. Close encounters with ?Owners of Nature? in the Argentine Chaco Qom/Toba world.Pablo Wright (CONICET-UBA)taanqui@yahoo.comIn this paper I explore different first person accounts in which Qom/Toba individuals encountered powerful beings associated with what the Western culture defines as nature or the ?natural world?. As I could record in my fieldwork among the Argentine Chaco Qom indigenous peoples, for them all what exists is inhabited by a handful collection of powerful beings that one way or another bestow haloik (power) to humans to perform almost all daily activities. The Qom regard these beings as non-humans or jaqa?a (?other?, ?strange?), and many of them ?owns? (i.e., take care of) certain geographical, spatial domains as well as specific activities. Humans can meet them not only in daylight, but also in dreams, and in both cases, they are conceived of as real and meaningful encounters. Throughout the text I present these experiences of encounters with Owners and the interpretation my interlocutors carried out, in which their worldview is reproduced but also contested vis-à-vis the peripheral modernity that traverse their life.