Plagues, past, and futures for the Yagan canoe people of Cape Horn, southern Chile.

Abstract

The manner in which the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the indigenous Yagan people of Navarino Island in southern Chile is the topic of this paper. Like other First Nation communities, these nomadic people suffered decimation and disease in successive encounters with Europeans, and then, in the mid-twentieth century, forced sedentarization by the Chilean State. More recently, the Yagan have fought the expansion of salmon aquaculture to the Island. Making use of a sociomaterial approach, we examine how the threat of past and present viruses and diseases, added to the tragic effects of colonization, become part of a broader sociohistorical debate on the right of coastal peoples to their maritories. Paradoxically, our results suggest that COVID-19 has become part of an assemblage of ethnic revitalization, opening possibilities for the Yagan clans to make some of their envisioned futures possible.