Hain: Ceremony at the End of the Earth - Fuego - Selk'nam People - Yaghan People

No writing.

This book is about the now-extinct Selk'nam people, who painted their bodies with designs representing spirits.
Their unique sensibility provides inspiration.

Contents:
Pointed conical masks, bold patterns covering naked bodies, and strange poses—when someone first sees the series of photographs taken by the anthropologist M. Gusinde in 1923, they might think it's a scene from an old science fiction movie or body painting art. In fact, this is one of the disguises used in the "Hain" ceremony, which the Selk'nam tribe had been performing for generations.
The people known as the Selk'nam lived in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, located at the southern tip of the South American continent. It was the southernmost land where humans had settled, the "end of the earth." Four different tribes lived in this region, and the Selk'nam were the largest among them.
The existence of the main island, Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, and its inhabitants was first known to Western society in 1520, during Magellan's circumnavigation of the world. Many people visited this land afterward: "pirate" Drake, Captain Cook, the Beagle carrying Darwin, trading ships, seal hunting ships, gold prospectors, Christian missionaries, and ranchers. Various conflicts arose between them and the islanders, and by the end of the 19th century, Tierra del Fuego had become a living hell. Open massacres occurred, infectious diseases spread among those forcibly confined in the missions, and few survived. The Fuegian people went extinct in a short period, and the pure Selk'nam died out in 1999.
To many Westerners, the lives of the Fuegians seemed "savage" and "miserable," far removed from their own "cultural life." Many of those who lived almost naked in the freezing cold were kidnapped and put on display. However, they had a unique culture unlike anything else in the world. The "Hain" ceremony, which was rarely revealed to outsiders, was its highlight. This book carefully depicts the appearance of this amazing ceremony from the remaining records and the testimonies of the few people who knew it at the time, vividly conveying the image of the "vanished" tribe.