Remembering and Mapping our Territory: Mobilities and Mapuche Territoriality in Wallmapu, Chile.

Keywords: Indigenous peoples, Mapuche, Latin America, Mobility, Memory, Mapping
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

This paper explores how mobility expands understandings of indigenous territoriality based on collective memory in Wallmapu, ancestral Mapuche territory. Considering that the Mapuche people have historically been the subject of domination and settler colonialism by the Chilean and Argentinian states, I discuss the importance of examining the Mapuche mobility through historical routes and toponymy in the Andes Mountains of southern Chile for two reasons: first, the Mapuche narratives about mobility question visions of authenticity based on static and ahistorical ideas of indigenous community fixed in land enclosures. Second, the study of Mapuche routes and toponymy opens possibilities for mapping Mapuche memories, contesting the narratives of nation-state sovereignty. Therefore, this work considers the importance of the historical and critical analysis of indigenous mobility from a relational perspective to explore the political dimensions of memory facing the renewed processes of dispossession and neoliberal expansion in Mapuche territory.