Mapuche Territory Research Articles

Confronting coloniality of nature: Strategies to recover water and life in mapuche territory

Indigenous peoples dispute the material and symbolic control of territory and nature in confronting the “coloniality of nature,” proposing respect for knowledge and environmental relations that modernity-coloniality-capitalism have denied. In these disputes, they ways that nature, energy and water are used and their meaning are at the center of the debate. This work presents a decade of participatory action research with Mapuche organizations, with which strategies against the installation of extractive projects have been deployed. In these experiences, we highlight the use of the concept of ixofillmongen as a category of Mapuche knowledge that proposes a relational ontological approach to other life forms that are part of nature. Here we present its use as part of a Mapuche strategy to decolonize nature implemented against the installation of hydroelectric plants. Based on this work, we developed a participatory action research methodology that other indigenous communities can replicate for the design of collective research experiences and the creation of alternative territorial strategies. The research results show that it is possible to build strategies for the recovery of water based on native peoples’ territorial and natural knowledge and get them to dialogue with critical and decolonial geography.

Dispossession of Indigenous Knowledge in the Chilean Education System: Mapuche Experiences in Chile

ABSTRACT The article reports on the dispossession of indigenous knowledge in the public education system in Mapuche territory in La Araucanía, a southern region in Chile. The methodology is qualitative, 18 people were interviewed including Mapuche wise men and women, fathers, and mothers who experienced schooling processes in their younger years. The information analysis technique is content analysis, to identify explicit and latent meanings related to the schools they attended and the Chilean education system. Mapuche wise people and parents were consulted on the pedagogical practices of dispossession of ancestral knowledge that have been institutionalized. Main results show that schools have transmitted a Western Eurocentric-based knowledge which results in the dispossession of their own episteme and in their transformation into ordinary Chilean citizens who are unaware of their language and culture as a central axis of their sociocultural identity. Main conclusions account for the historical processes of schooling in an indigenous context, highlighting the consequences that this monocultural education has brought to families, communities, and new generations of indigenous. This poses the challenge of transforming the school curriculum, to transmit their truth, to advance in justice, reparation, and to ensure the non-repetition of the epistemicide of indigenous knowledge in the school.

Mapuche Socioeducational Knowledge: An Ambivalent Relation with School Learning

This manuscript discusses the impact of colonialism on indigenous peoples' education, specifically focusing on the Mapuche people. Highlights how the Chilean State's actions, such as the occupation of Mapuche territories and the imposition of its education system, have led to socioeducational and cultural ambivalence within schools. This ambivalence arises from the disconnect between Mapuche students' family-based education and the ignorance of teachers regarding their cultural background. The text explores the tension between different types of knowledge and emphasizes the need for intercultural dialogue and recognition of indigenous epistemes within the education system searching for a more inclusive and intercultural approach to education.

Implications of Extractivism and Environmental Pollution in Mapuche Territories of the Araucania Region.

Chile is facing an environmental crisis and the territory of the Mapuche people is no exception. This is largely due to extractivism, which refers to the massive extraction and exploitation of natural resources in an indiscriminate manner. The objective of this study was to reveal the implications of extractivism and environmental pollution in Mapuche territories in the Araucanía region. The methodology used was qualitative, based on constructivist grounded theory. In-depth interviews and participant observation were used to collect data. The participants were 46 kimeltuchefes. The main results revealed extensive monocultures of non-native trees: pine and eucalyptus, which consume large amounts of water. They also revealed environmental pollution and indiscriminate forestry extractivism related to these trees, which generate soil degradation and water pollution. These consequences reduce biodiversity and disturb the ngenh (spiritual beings and protectors of nature). They also affect the Mapuche's agricultural activities and, in turn, their health and subsistence. In addition, non-native tree monocultures, environmental pollution and forestry extractivism transgress the az mapu (Mapuche code of ethics and behaviour), which disturbs the ethical, moral and spiritual relationship between the Mapuche and nature. They also have negative implications for the küme mogen (good living of the Mapuche), since they violate the balance and harmony between the Mapuche and all living beings, elements and spiritual beings that are part of nature. This also violates the reciprocity between the Mapuche and nature. It was concluded that there have been violations of the human rights of the Mapuche people, given that they are exposed to harmful environmental conditions that put their health and subsistence at considerable risk. In this sense, the Mapuche are experiencing a spiritual, physical, cognitive, attitudinal, affective and material imbalance. Ultimately, the state of Chile must generate intercultural environmental public and educational policies aimed at generating environmental awareness and creating actions to solve environmental problems in order to protect Mapuche and non-Mapuche territories.

The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History by Carolynn R. Larson

Reviewed by: The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History by Carolynn R. Larson Evan C. Rothera Larson, Carolynn R. The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2020. La Conquista del Desierto—the Conquest of the Desert—continues to polarize people. The name refers to a series of military campaigns conducted by [End Page 233] Argentine forces from 1878 to 1885 that were designed to drive indigenous people out of the pampas and Patagonia. As Carolyne R. Larson observes, "Many in Argentina today see the conquest as bringing civilization to a barbaric landscape," but other people routinely spray-paint monuments of Julio A. Roca, the commander of the conquest and later president of Argentina, with phrases such as "Roca = genocide" and "Assassin" (1). Larson, currently associate professor of history at St. Norbert College and author of Our Indigenous Ancestors: A Cultural History of Museums, Science, and Identity in Argentina, 1877–1943 (2015), has assembled a talented group of scholars who examine the events of the conquest and their specific meanings to "unpack the issues of nation, violence, memory, colonialism, and indigeneity entangled within them" (2). In addition, the chapters in this volume foreground indigenous voices to locate counternarratives that challenge long-accepted ideas and stories about the conquest. Larson opens with a detailed discussion of the official story of the conquest and analyzes the "military, state, and popular press sources that chiefly crafted the conquest's central narratives of national urgency, peaceful conquest, indigenous disappearance, and triumphant civilization" (17–18). She provides important background information, especially for readers who are not well versed in the history of these events. Julio Vezub and Mark Healey flip the official story on its head by narrating the conquest from the viewpoint of Mapuche and Tehuelche caciques, not from the perspective of Argentine soldiers and leaders. Vezub and Healey assert that "indigenous leaders were far more effective than previous scholars have recognized in coordinating actions, protecting their people, and negotiating terms of subordination to the newly powerful national state" (44). Rob Christensen contends that the Argentine army's victory was "shaped by the confluence of many forces outside creole leaders' control" (71). His focus on the environment places him among scholars who have begun to emphasize relationships among environmental factors and military campaigns. Ricardo D. Salvatore analyzes Inacayal and Foyel, indigenous caciques who were captured and sent to the Museum of La Plata. Salvatore contributes to scholarly discussions of living indigenous people in a museum by exploring how they "fed the curiosity of both scientists and the public at large" and how their presence was seen as "a culmination of the civilizing project of modernity" (120). Walter Delrio and Pila Pérez illustrate how crimes against humanity occurred during three periods of genocide in Argentina. Jennie I. Daniels investigates [End Page 234] literary representation of the Argentine desert and indigenous people. She finds that literary works often portray indigenous people as "faceless hordes rather than specific groups" (146). David M. K. Sheinin argues for an expanded understanding of the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. He notes that some military officials believed they had a historical responsibility, dating back to the conquest, to indigenous people. Thus, while some officers oversaw secret detention centers, others "were exercising a multifaceted plan to better the lives of First Peoples by improving rural education, building much-needed housing, providing better access to medical facilities, and more" (192). Ana Ramos examines the events of the conquest from the viewpoint of Mapuche memory and reveals the "value and importance that Mapuche agency has had in the regeneration of their affective and political bonds" (217). Sarah D. Warren, in the volume's final chapter, analyzes maps of Mapuche territory (Wallmapu) and illustrates how "contemporary maps of Mapuche territory include borders, boundaries, and places of historical significance related to the Conquest of the Desert in their renderings" (219). The Conquest of the Desert is a thought-provoking volume that does a great deal toward complicating scholarly understandings and revising the official story of these events. A chapter placing the Conquest of the...

Advancing towards an understanding of the relationship between culture and agrobiodiversity. A case study in Mapuche territory, southern Chile

Advancing towards an understanding of the relationship between culture and agrobiodiversity. A case study in Mapuche territory, southern Chile

Localisation of International Law Narratives in the Nineteenth Century: The Spanish Bombardment of Valparaíso and the Occupation of Araucanía (1864–1867)

The present research analyses particularities and dynamics of a non-European normative order such as that in South America in the nineteenth century. Thus, this research argues that the Spanish bombardment of the Chilean port of Valparaíso in 1866 helped locally recreate international law narratives such as the standard of civilization and the civilizing mission. Paradoxically, the bombardment of Valparaíso strengthened the self-perception of the Chilean oligarchy that it had built a ‘model republic’ ruled by the European law of nations and by free trade. The most significant issue was whether this ‘civilized order’ should not only be defended internationally before Spanish aggression but also be extended to the ancestral lands of the Mapuche nation under the guise of ‘civilizing pacification’. In conclusion, this study demonstrates the influence of the Spanish–Chilean conflict on the local cultural justification for the occupation of Mapuche territories, whose socio-political consequences persist in Chile even today. Comparing global normative discourses with their local versions, this research seeks to contribute to the current debate in legal and international history on the forms that northern imperial logic has taken in peripheral conflicts over the international order since the nineteenth century.

Economic, physical and psychological violence in Chile

This article argues that present day expansion of capital in Chile is based on the horrendous human rights violations that took place particularly after the 9/11/73 coup d’état. The coup in Chile demonstrates the owners of capital (national or international) have not and will not hesitate to use extreme violence to impose a model of development designed to meet capital needs: maximum profits. In the same manner that capital is indifferent to the consequences of the physical and psychological trauma it brings to humans, it is also indifferent to the environmental destruction it leaves in its path. This article illustrates how the system established by the dictatorship facilitates the exploitation of the labour force and the pillage of Chile's natural resources by national and multinational corporations, today. This also explains the increasing concentration of economic power and wealth in areas such as banking, insurance and the forest industry to name a few. In the case of the forest industry, the state subsidies to this sector, and the resistance of the Mapuche people, are noted. Most of the forest land is in Mapuche territory. The roots of the Mapuche struggle are the same to that of many indigenous peoples around the world: the defense of their territory and culture. As well, other social sectors in Chile are increasingly resisting capital attacks on their physical and social well being. For example, like the Mapuche, students, artisan fishermen are increasingly resisting capital. They are facing the same response from the current government.

Mapping hydropower conflicts: A legal geography of dispossession in Mapuche-Williche Territory, Chile

In this article, I examine how hydropower projects in Mapuche territory both form part of internationally recognized approaches to develop renewable energy and also anchor colonial relations in rivers. In pursuit of energy development, water and ancestral cultural practices of the Mapuche Pueblo are being seized by a nexus of state laws and informal practices of private sector actors. Concurrently, Mapuche people assert their jurisdictions and experience resurgence of Indigenous lifeways through defending their waterways. Drawing on collaborative research guided by the Alianza Territorial Puelwillimapu, a Mapuche-Williche alliance convoked by ancestral leaders, I provide a methodological contribution to legal geography’s analysis of Indigenous rights. Bringing a legal geography approach to dispossession, I explain how collaborative mapmaking and systematizing the “layers of dispossession” provides a methodological approach to consider structural limitations to environmental justice on Indigenous lands. Overall, this case contributes to how we conceive of spatial justice in legal geography and in renewable energy development.

Undoing disaster colonialism: a pilot map of the pandemic's first wave in the Mapuche territories of Southern Chile

PurposeThe authors use media research and crowdsourced mapping to document how the first wave of the pandemic (April–August 2020) affected the Mapuche, focussing on seven categories of events: territorial control, spiritual defence, food sovereignty, traditional health practices, political violence, territorial needs and solidarity, and extractivist expansion.Design/methodology/approachResearch on the effects of the pandemic on the Mapuche and their territories is lacking; the few existing studies focus on death and infection rates but overlook how the pandemic interacts with ongoing processes of extractivism, state violence and community resistance. The authors’ pilot study addresses this gap through a map developed collaboratively by disaster scholars and Mapuche journalists.FindingsThe map provides a spatial and chronological overview of this period, highlighting the interconnections between the pandemic and neocolonialism. As examples, the authors focus on two phenomena: the creation of “health barriers” to ensure local territorial control and the state-supported expansion of extractive industries during the first months of the lockdown.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors intersperse our account of the project with reflections on its limitations and, specifically, on how colonial formations shape the research. Decolonising disaster studies and disaster risk reduction practice, the authors argue, is an ongoing process, bound to be flawed and incomplete but nevertheless an urgent pursuit.Originality/valueIn making this argument, the paper responds to the Disaster Studies Manifesto that inspires this special issue, taking up its invitation to scholars to be more reflexive about their research practice and to frame their investigations through grounded perspectives.

Walking and telling the territory: reclaiming Mapuche planning through storytelling and land-based methodologies

ABSTRACT The spatial disciplines have slowly started to acknowledge their complicity with Indigenous dispossession in settler colonial contexts. Since early contact, instruments of land appropriation like surveying, mapping, town building, zoning, and place-naming have helped legitimise settler presence and imposed Western spatial relations over Indigenous territories. Indigenous planning – understood as planning by, for, and with Indigenous peoples grounded in their worldviews, values, and priorities – pre-dates and stands in stark contrast to dominant planning discourses. This paper offers methodological reflections on a participatory action research project that seeks to rebuild a Mapuche spatial planning knowledge base that still exists despite state-led attempts to disarticulate Mapuche socio-spatial relations. Within the logic of Indigenous resurgence, we consider the power of land-based walking and storytelling methodologies as tools to rebuild Mapuche spatial planning. By deepening embodied community knowledge of the land, renaming places, and (re)producing community-owned knowledge that refuses to be shared outwardly such methodologies not only contest the legitimacy of Western planning systems, but reassert the principles that have long guided Mapuche spatial planning and support the reconstruction of Mapuche territory. We also explore the limits of such approaches and whether they can reorient the ethics of Western planning towards Indigenous priorities.

The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History

The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History

The micropolitical life of energy projects: A collaborative exploration of injustice and resistance to small hydropower projects in the Wallmapu, Southern Chile

This article contributes to an emerging body of literature about the micropolitics of the transition to renewable energy by examining how community leaders, in order to protect their territories, contest the energy transition. We present findings from two ethnographic case studies of small hydropower plants (SHPs) in indigenous Mapuche territory. As SHPs up to 20 MW are considered renewable projects by law, Chilean national authorities consider them as a non-invasive eco-friendly solution and, consequently, most of these projects are approved without carrying out an indigenous consultation and, thus, ignoring community leaders’ demands for territorial autonomy. Following a micropolitical ecology approach, this paper analyses community leaders’ resistance towards SHPs in Mapuche territories by discussing three key aspects: 1) access to information, 2) participation in decision-making processes, and 3) changes in community politics. These are different dimensions of the ‘micropolitical life of SHPs’, a heuristic tool, defined in collaboration with community leaders to explore the contentious political dynamics that community leaders experience in their resistance against SHPs on the one hand, and to describe how community leaders’ political practices shape and are shaped by contingent encounters and alliances in specific historical and territorial settings on the other. We conclude that despite the anguish that SHPs cause, community leaders bring about hope that may create possibilities to transform their territories.

Delayed and Approved: A Quantitative Study of Conflicts and the Environmental Impact Assessments of Energy Projects in Chile 2012–2017

The Sistema de Evaluación de Impacto Ambiental (Environmental Impact Assessment System—SEIA) evaluates all projects potentially harmful to human health and the environment in Chile. Since its establishment, many projects approved by the SEIA have been contested by organized communities, especially in the energy sector. The question guiding our research is whether socio-environmental conflicts affect the evaluation times and the approval rates of projects under assessment. Using a novel database comprising all energy projects assessed by the SEIA, we analyzed 380 energy projects that entered the SEIA review process between 2012 and 2017 and matched these projects with protest events. Using linear and logit regression, we find no association between the occurrence of protests aimed at specific projects and the probability of project approval. We do, however, find that projects associated with the occurrence of protest events experience significantly longer review times. To assess the robustness of this finding, we compare two run-of-river plants proposed in Mapuche territory in Chile’s La Araucanía region. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for sustainable environmental decision making.

La cordillera de los Andes no es frontera. Cuerpos-territorios y medicina ancestral mapuche en contexto de pandemia

The article analyzes the campaign «La Cordillera No Es Frontera», promoted by the Indigenous Women’s Movement for Good Living due to the situation of the machi (Mapuche health authority) Mawün Jones, from Ngulumapu (current Chilean territory), who crossed the Andes Mountain range to assist patients in Puelmapu (current Argentinian territory), and was stranded due to the isolation measures decreed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This campaign fostered the machi´s return to her territory and also a debate on the political limits imposed by the Argentine and Chilean States on Mapuche territory and the logic of social control over indigenous women. We propose to reflect on the mountain chain as a political border, as well as a geographical, symbolic, and physical border. This implies reviewing the decisions of the States that affect people who experience ethnic and gender inequalities, and who also practice unrecognized forms of medicine.

Ecosystem services and uses of dune systems of the coast of the Araucanía Region, Chile: A perception study

Coastal dunes can offer a series of Ecosystem Services (ES), especially to local communities. This study aimed to evaluate these benefits by exploring the perception of the Mapuche communities and representatives of the local government concerning the ES provided by the coastal dune fields of the Araucanía Region of Chile. Binary, multiple-choice, Likert scale and open questions were used to explore the general knowledge of 49 subjects about the ES provided by the dunes. Closed questions were analysed using Fisher's exact test, and tests of goodness of fit chi-square and G, while open questions were analysed by qualitative content analysis. The results showed that (1) cultural services were more important for Mapuche communities, while tourism was more valued for local government, (2) tourism and stock-raising were the most frequent use given to the dunes in the opinion of local government and Mapuche communities respondents, respectively, (3) both groups think that dunes offer habitat for biodiversity, and (4) the regulation of natural processes is one of the most important functions for both groups, although Mapuche communities consider that dune fields would not attenuate the effects of a tsunami. The conclusion is that dune fields offer a series of benefits, which are perceived in different ways by Mapuche communities and representatives of the local government. The lack of recognition of this knowledge is one of the main gaps in Chile's territorial planning instruments since it could make a decisive contribution to the management of social-ecological systems by zoning areas and identifying singular components, especially in Mapuche territories.

Por una defensa de las aguas de Wallmapu en la poesí­a de mujeres: Kvyeh, Figueroa y Paredes Pinda

En el artí­culo se analiza "”desde un enfoque próximo al ecofeminismo"” un corpus de poemas de las escritoras Rayen Kvyeh, Damsi Figueroa y Adriana Paredes Pinda, en el cual se elabora un discurso a favor de la defensa de los rí­os y mares de Wallmapu en el marco del Chile posdictatorial. Desde una conciencia descolonizadora alineada con la epistemologí­a y ética mapuche, las voces poéticas visibilizan crí­ticamente la soberaní­a de la muerte ejercida por el capitalismo extractivista sobre el territorio mapuche y su biodiversidad, poniendo de relieve la concepción indí­gena acerca del agua y replanteando polí­ticamente los ví­nculos entre mujeres y naturaleza

Pluralidad de significado en los bienes comunes: mirada Mapuche hacia la defensa de las aguas

En lo teórico artículo revisa la concepción de pluriversos indígenas trabajada por A. Escobar y M. de la Cadena para aportar a la discusión sobre bienes comunes según E. Ostrom. La investigación se articula a partir de un caso concreto; la proyección de centrales hidroeléctricas en territorio mapuche y el correspondiente conflicto sociocultural asociado. Parte importante de la investigación se centra en revisar el termino ngen (dueño del espacio), con el cual las comunidades han articulado defensas de los sistemas de aguas en diferentes puntos del Wallmapu. El hallazgo de este artículo es que la noción clásica de bien común debe ser criticada y abierta hacia concepciones más amplias de significado y que dicho paso exige además una mirada crítica de lo político.

WATERSCAPES IN WALLMAPU: LESSONS FROM MAPUCHE PERSPECTIVES

abstract This article reflects on the multiple worlds generated around waterscapes in the diverse Mapuche territory, Wallmapu. We contrast the responses of three Mapuche communities to external interventions and water availability in the Chimehuin and Lepá rivers in Argentina, and the Huenehue River in Chile. The comparison reveals the nature of Mapuche waterscapes, the tensions provoked by the global economy, and its impacts on water management. Mapuche communities establish an intersubjective relationship with water, securing and protecting their water supply. Waterscapes are constituted as living entities where human and nonhuman stories converge and on which biocultural memory is periodically enriched in its response to a changing environment. We conclude that coexistence between Mapuche and non-Mapuche worlds, however diverse the communities might be, is sustained through equivocal relations and partial connections. Established views of water management in Wallmapu could be greatly enriched by the Mapuche’s views and practices.

Kai: Restoration of the Native Forest for the Conservation of the Craft Tradition of the Pilwa of Lake Budi

The Budi Lake territories are inhabited by Mapuche Lafkenche communities, where their artisans develop the pilwa -bag woven in Chupón fiber- as a traditional craft. The pilwa has been recognized by state organizations for its cultural and ecological value. However, its raw material, the “kai” or Chupón, is declared a vulnerable species. This condition has generated in institutions such as FIA Foundation for Agricultural Innovation, to allocate public resources for its conservation, introducing foreign concepts into the territory for the plant cultivation, which includes the inclusion of plastic in the Mapuche territories. The present paper investigates the cultural aspects of resistance to this vision, and in particular, to the elements of the Mapuche worldview attributed to the species and native forest. The study is based on interviews with Mapuche leaders, indigenous communities and families of Pilwa artisans, who in 2018 raised a project to restore the native forest, for the preservation of the Chupón species and the handcrafted tradition. This project was not funded by the Common Fund. Despite the Mapuche artisan families of the Pilwa, they have started a native forest conservation process in private estates to promote the sustainable land use and maintain the cultural relationship with nature. The findings are expected to support the future community presentation of a native forest restoration project around Lake Budi.