CHILE & ARGENTINA · LIVING TERRITORIES
01 — THE PRESENT
Indigenous peoples and their descendants are part of contemporary Patagonia. Their communities maintain memories, rights, cultural practices and relationships with territory that extend across today's borders.
02 — TERRITORY
A channel can be a route; a beach, a landing place; the steppe, a network of water sources and camps. Territory is more than surface area: it brings together relationships, histories, names and knowledge passed down through generations.
Modern categories simplify spaces travelled through seasonal cycles and distinct ways of finding one's bearings.
03 — KAWÉSQAR WÆS
For more than six millennia, Kawésqar families have inhabited the southern fjords and channels. Navigation was more than getting from place to place: it connected shores, camps, tides, animals, winds and memory.
Kawésqar Wæs encompasses a broad maritime and coastal space. It cannot be understood through a modern separation of land and water.
Routes, sheltered places and sea conditions were learned and passed down between generations.
The Kawésqar community of Puerto Edén maintains cultural life, memory, maritime livelihoods and fishing in the island territory.
Communities continue to defend their territory, culture and continuity in the face of new environmental pressures.
04 — THE KAWÉSQAR LANGUAGE
Kawésqar is one of the Indigenous languages still in use in Chile. The Puerto Edén community and specialists have developed grammars, educational materials and an audio archive of around 170 hours to support its documentation and revitalisation.
05 — BEYOND THE WORD ‘EXTINCT’
‘These efforts help people stop saying that we Kawésqar are extinct,’ explained Juan Carlos Tonko Huenucoy of the Kawésqar Community of Puerto Edén in 2019, when presenting new words added to the language. Revitalisation looks towards future generations.
06 — FOUR HISTORIES
These brief accounts outline broad territorial relationships. Each people has a diverse history that cannot be reduced to a single label.
Their maritime culture is connected with the western channels and archipelagos, travelled through navigation and knowledge of tides, shores and shelter.
The continent's southernmost Indigenous people developed their way of life in the waters south of Tierra del Fuego and around the Beagle Channel.
Their territories, memories and descendants are a living part of Karukinka. Chile recognised the Selk'nam people through Law 21,606 in 2023.
Extensive routes linked water sources and camps —aike— between Santa Cruz and Magallanes, sustained by detailed knowledge of the steppe.
07 — MOBILITY
Routes followed resources, seasons and social relationships. On the steppe, guanacos provided food and raw materials; on the shore, navigation connected islands, coasts and camps.
Mobility did not mean an absence of territory.
08 — PLACE NAMES
Karukinka, Aike and Chaltén are examples of Indigenous words incorporated into today's maps. Each place name holds a way of describing, remembering or relating to a place.
09 — RESPECTFUL RELATIONSHIPS
Communities and descendants exist. Historical losses do not justify erasing their contemporary presence.
Ceremonial objects, archives and portraits require context, attribution and respect for any cultural restrictions.
A name or symbol is not a freely available decoration: it belongs to specific histories and cultural relationships.
Institutional sources are a starting point; they need to be complemented by the organisations and communities of each people.
10 — HISTORY AND THE PRESENT IN DEPTH
There is no single Indigenous experience of Patagonia. Canoeing peoples, land-based hunters and communities on both sides of the Andes developed different languages, movements and knowledge. Their descendants continue to organise, create and demand recognition.
Kawésqar and Yaghan connected maritime territories; Selk'nam and Aónikenk developed land-based movements adapted to forests, coasts and steppe. These categories help explain differences, but should not turn dynamic societies into fixed types.
Exchanges, alliances and conflicts linked regions long before national borders. Museum objects represent only part of histories sustained by kinship, oral traditions and territory.
Expanding livestock farming, state campaigns, private violence, epidemics and missions transformed territories and lives. Speaking only of disappearance hides historical responsibilities and the continuing presence of descendants.
Archives must be read alongside community memories. Many documents were produced by those who administered, evangelised or exploited the territory, and carry their own biases.
Language revitalisation, community research and the recovery of names are contemporary actions. In Chile, legal recognition of the Selk'nam people in 2023 corrected a historical exclusion.
Using preferred names, consulting sources created by Indigenous peoples themselves and respecting consultation processes are basic editorial practices. Culture is not a decorative resource for tourism.
This expanded text draws on the official sources listed at the end of the page.
11 — ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
Brief answers to common questions, with links that help you understand the region further.
They include the Kawésqar, Yaghan, Selk'nam and Aónikenk or Tehuelche, among others. Their territories, languages and movements differed, and they should not be presented as a single culture.
Not as a general statement. Descendants, communities and organisations exist today. The language of extinction was long used to deny continuity and rights.
Names can carry colonial histories or imposed categories. Using Kawésqar, Yaghan and Selk'nam in accordance with current recommendations recognises self-representation and avoids reproducing rejected terms.