Nana Dummad
Guna · deity · Guna traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Nana, the Great Mother, is the female pole of the Guna creator dyad, named in the same breath as the Great Father in the formula Baba-Nana. She is identified with the living earth, Napguana, whose soil, forests and waters are understood as her nurturing body; in modern Guna political and ecological rhetoric Napguana has become a central emblem of the land itself. Because Guna theology conceives creation as the joint work of mother and father, Nana is never a subordinate consort but a co-equal source of the world and of its moral and reproductive order.
Domains
- earth and fertility
- cosmogony
Powers
- bring forth and sustain the living earth
Epithets
- Napguana — Mother EarthJames Howe, A People Who Would Not Kneel (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998). (secondary)
Relations
- spouse: Baba DummadMac Chapin, Pab Igala: Historias de la tradicion kuna (Quito: Abya-Yala, 1989). (secondary)
Sources
- Nana Dummad, the Great Mother, is the female half of the Guna creator dyad and is identified with the living earth (Napguana).: Erland Nordenskiold, An Historical and Ethnological Survey of the Cuna Indians, ed. Henry Wassen (Goteborg, 1938). (secondary); James Howe, A People Who Would Not Kneel (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998). (secondary)