Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Among the Wana people no healing process is possible outside the community. Inside this culture almost every action is an expression of kasintuwu, sense of community. This is evident during healing rituals and funerals, where the community behave as single being to be renerated and healed.

Paper long abstract:

The illness or death of a person are critical moments for a small community and its survival; they breaks the delicate balance inside it and cast a shadow of insignificancy on life and the future of it. To avoid being overwhelmed by the emotional wave caused by an unexpected loss or illness and to retrieve the social balance, the Wana people of Morowali act together to state that although a member is ill or dead the Wana, as a community, are eternal.In a culture where the community is more important of the single members, each Wana contributes to the wellbeing of the others and is made aware that without each other no healing, or even death, could happen; in a constant expression of kasintuwu (sense of community).By examining Wana mythology, the momago (shamanic ritual) and the kayori (funeral), I intend to describe and analyse the intricate connections between the single and the community and how their wellbeing is assured by the sense of belonging that these rituals reaffirm through the reacting of the primordial density of the mythical era. In the end, the recreation of this mythological density, where there is no distance between single members and the community, transforms a negative event in a playful moment that will heal the community and assure its future.Data have been collected during two fieldworks conducted in 2011 and 2016 and are part of a bigger study on Wana musical and emotional world.