Through travelling light projection, Corporation Traitraico and Delight Lab artists help highlight the depossession history of the Selk’nam people and the fight for their recognition and repair.
Translated from Spanish – Article from the El Mostrador newspaper (Chile)
A light art piece travelled through the Chilean South Patagonia to shine light on the recognition and repair of the Selk’nam people.
The Selk’nam people has been indigenous to Patagonia for thousands of years. During colonization, they suffered persecution, murder, rape and hostage to be shown in European human zoos. The Church banished them and forced them to abandon their culture; and the Chilean State did not recognize them as subjects to rights and later even considered the culture as extinct.
Thanks to two decades of fight, the Chilean Congress finally approved, in September 2023, bill 19.253 for the State to recognize the Selk’nam as an Indigenous people and its culture as living, adding them to the list of other ethnic groups such as Mapuche and Aimara.
« We will now be able to promote our culture more heavily. We need a political presence, and laws to protect our heritage because we suffer from a lot of cultural appropriation. It is the responsibility of the State to repair, through education, the content that is taught today and that leave the Selk’nam people for dead”, says Mauricio Astroza, young Selk’nam individual and member of the Telkacher Assembly.
To help remember, highlight and support the people, cultural and environmental organization Corporation Traitraico and video projection team Delight Lab have gathered the testimonials of Selk’nam individuals from Chile and Argentina and projected them, using their territory as a background.
The projections are part of the “Relatos de Luz” (Stories of Light) project started in 2019 and that travels through the Southern territories. The team also went to Los Lagos, Aysén, Los Ríos et La Araucanía.
The project was made possible thanks to the 2021 Regional Artistic Fund for the Culture of the Native Peoples of the Magallanes Region and Chilean Antarctica; the National Arts Foundations; the Visual Arts and Creation and Production; the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage. The Telkacher Assembly, Bandera Selk’nam, the Selk’nam Language Academy, the Selk’nam Women Group Khol Hool Na from the Lola Kjepja Lineage and representants of the Rafaela Ishton Indigenous community also help support the initiative.
