Lola Kiepja

Lola Kiepja, pencil on paper, 14x11 inches, 2020

Lola Kiepja was about 90 years old when she died in October of 1966. She had survived her two husbands, all of her nine children and most of her grandchildren as well. She actually survived most all of her people, the Selk'nam of Tierra del Fuego, and was, in 1965 and 1966 when ethnologist Anne Chapman befriended and recorded her, the only surviving member who knew their language and customs. Lola Kiepja was, like mother and maternal grandfather, a shaman who had been instructed on the secrets of Selk'nam mythology. She had been born just before the onslaught of disease, fracticide, and a genocide had reduced the numbers of Selk'nam from about 4,000 to about 300 in just a few decades. Anne Chapman recorded 92 chants by Kiepja, The Guanaco Myth Chant, one of Kipeja's favorites, was recorded more than once and featured in last year's top 100 as well as this year's. The myth (and lyrics to the chant) goes as follows:

I am about to die. Bury me in the white earth (where the guanacos often sleep and rub their backs to rid themselves of vermin) but do not bury me deep in the earth, leave my head and shoulders free. After I die you must perform tachira (the mourning rite) and as you are going away singing of your grief, a man will approach you. He will look exactly like me but he will not be me. He will ask to make love to you, do as he says.

"When he died the daughters did just as their father had ordered. As they walked away, while they were still singing the lament, the father jumped out of his grave, hot with desire to make love to his daughters. He sniffed their tracks and chased wildly after them, urinating as he ran (as if he had already been metamorphosed into a guanaco). When he caught up to them he said: "I am the one your father told you about. Come let us make love." One of his daughters ran on. When he made love to the other both became transformed into guanacos." [Anne Chapman, The End of the World, Buenos Aires, 1988]

A guanaco, a camelid related to the Llama, was a main food staple of the Selk'nam. Check here for more information and other portrait paintings of Lola Kiepja.