The Myth of Sepé Tiaraju: a commemoration ethnography

Abstract

This paper aims to present and to analyze some representations, elaborated in Rio Grande do Sul, about Sepé Tiaraju, a historical and mythological Indian Guarani. These representations are narratives concerning the past missioner and the existence of some imaginaries about Missions and the Gaucho that were elaborated from representations of Indian Sepé. Additionally, they represent the diversity of established relations with the past in the present and the creation of the process of regional identities in Rio Grande do Sul. The study of representations about the past missioner and the figure of Sepé Tiaraju will be analyzed as an anthropological problem in which past events affect the process of creation of the present of social groups, that means, the necessity to consider the process of myths constructions from the history and their appropriations.