She also believed she was chosen by ancient spiritual figures to receive these accounts due to a particular early childhood experience with a shaman from the Amazon Basin, where she assumed, with his guidance, the visage of a Jaguar, and was given an overview, and history of the region. As a storyteller and artist, I have placed the question of veracity firmly aside. Examined in a post-modern world, we understand the best historical accounts are little more than fictionalized narratives. Belief in any story rests firmly in the purview of the reader, listener, and witness to these stories. I believe Jean Maria, having suffered so much trauma in the course of her life, earnestly received the stories direct to her psyche, without questioning their origins. She became used to being forced to stop and ”take dictation” at inconvenient and unlikely times, an experience she once described as overwhelming. I also know she never treated them as a fiction, or a product of her personal imagination. These unusual tales offer narratives that speak from a place beyond the dichotomies of truth and falsehood, good and evil, normal and abnormal, and other tropes of Western storytelling. They speak from a place of mystery and prehistory, a place where the truth of the culture in which the story is told determines how it can be understood, and even when and if the tale is ”over.” As an audio artist, I find bringing them to life in a contemporary form to be challenging and enriching, and I hope you will give them space in your own imagination.-Wes Chester
Tales Blown in on a Jaguar Wind
This podcast exists to present a small sample of decades of very remarkable stories brought to light by the well known human rights activist Jean Maria Arrigo. Jean Maria never claimed to be the author of these stories, preferring the title of amanuensis (one receiving and recording dictation from another source, in this case directly messaged to her psyche.) No matter the authorship, the stories themselves are profound and unusual, running the gamut from tragedy to comedy, from haunting details of life’s worst moments , to surprising redemption stories, to comedic moments, and not a cliché Disney ending in sight. A ”Jaguar Wind ” is the name the tribes have bestowed upon a tropical storm or hurricane. Like a Jaguar Wind, these tales do not enter subtly, and they are unapologetically free to play havoc with our expectations.
Listen on:
I first met Jean Maria, in my role as an aesthetic consultant, when she was seeking to understand this amazing collection of visual art and storytelling, a product of her hand, that she had no feeling of authorship or connection towards. She was a brilliant, witty, and humble character, and the worlds inhabited by the characters of the Blood River Epic, were a second home to her imagination. The tribal groups represented in the tales ( The River People, Camp People, Grasslands People, Cave People, and Those From the Far Beginnings) cannot be neatly traced to any existing people or group. What can be said is that each culture comes with unique worldviews, creation myths and social structures. And they all seem to be situated within (or having migrated to) an Amazon River tributary basin, all contending historically for the same limited resources. These tales offer us glimpses into the ceremonial and spiritual life, and the belief systems of the tribes, but also into the exigencies of everyday life. They are tales full of conflict and conquest, love and sex, home and family, loss and grief, and the search for belonging, all set in tribal cultures that feel both alien and universal. Neither a student of anthropology, nor of spirituality, Jean Maria never claimed to understand the stories, nor their lessons. But she did feel a positive moral obligation to publish these precolonial accounts, in accordance with her understanding that the telling of, and the listening to these tales might help peoples reincarnate, by being called into the wombs of their descendants. That obligation was Jean Maria’s truth.
Episodes
Monday Sep 30, 2024
Monday Sep 30, 2024
A young man seeking his identity faces prejudice, and self doubt. When he finds the truth about his family, what manner of retribution will he seek for the circumstances of his life. Can he correct generational trauma? Can he seek justice beyond the grave?
Friday Jul 05, 2024
Friday Jul 05, 2024
This short text by Jean Maria Arrigo gives an overview of the successive waves of peoples who populated the Blood River tributary in the Amazon River Basin in pre historic -precolonial times. This brief review begins with the clan of Big Giant, who turned a boulder inside out to create his wife, and shook his family into existence from naked rock. It ends with the Camp People, the respected and valued hosts of the hungry slopes, who broke the chain of conquest, until Europeans Arrived.
Friday Jun 28, 2024
Friday Jun 28, 2024
A young orphaned woman, coming of age, defies tribal custom by refusing marriage, instead seeking to learn the truth of her origins in defiance of taboo. Will what she learns about her parents give her the cuorage to begin her own family?
Monday Jun 24, 2024
Monday Jun 24, 2024
Between the instinct of a predator, and the instinct of a mother, which is stronger? What sacrifices will be made when dreams become real?
Wednesday May 15, 2024
Wednesday May 15, 2024
Two men, adopted brothers of the Camp People cannot endure the mystery of their birth, and take a fateful journey to discover their true origins, only to uncover a truth no one dares name.
Monday Mar 18, 2024
Monday Mar 18, 2024
What would you do to survive capture by mysterious strangers? What secrets would you carry to your death bed? In this camp people story, survival comes at a price....
Sunday Mar 10, 2024
Sunday Mar 10, 2024
What would you surrender for your most passionate desire? And what would you gain from the surrender? This tale is unattributed to any single tribe, but is older, more akin to a "just-so" story. Mild adult themes.
Sunday Mar 10, 2024
Sunday Mar 10, 2024
What happened to those early hominids, when modern humans arrived? Predation? Intermingling of species? If only the bones could speak...
Friday Mar 08, 2024
Friday Mar 08, 2024
Sometimes the meek carry secrets the strong dare not hear. Sometimes our origin stories only become clear when our questions are braver than our doubts.
Monday Mar 04, 2024
Monday Mar 04, 2024
After an act of extraordinary violence, how can healing begin?
This very special first episode is in memoriam to the remarkable artist and activist Jean Maria Arrigo, whose work as an artist and storyteller, like that of her advocacy, spanned decades. Although she is no longer with us, Jean Maria's stories are still in production. This one has the distinction of not only being Jean Maria's favorite, but the only one in the series which is entirely voiced by her.