21st Century Indigenous Mapuche Society: Intercultural Challenges and Solutions

Quick Info

Program Overview

The indigenous Mapuche population of southern Chile is known principally for its arduous resistance for more than 500 years, first against the Spanish occupation and secondly against the Chilean state. Today, this ongoing conflict is being met on many different fronts including through intercultural programs in education and health. These efforts have raised important questions: How can we teach both western philosophy and Mapuche rakizuam as equally valid? To what degree does the Mapuche machi enter into dialogue with the traditional western health system? How is it possible to embrace two radically distinct paradigms at the same time? During this seminar, we’ll explore Mapuche culture from an intercultural perspective, analyzing the current political conflicts and examining recent intercultural attempts at integrating distinct paradigms and practices. Lectures on Mapuche history, cosmovision, and the idea and understanding of the “other” will broaden participants’ understanding of the intercultural and political challenges the Mapuche face in the 21st century.

Program Activities

Lectures, dialogs, and community engagement opportunities will facilitate participants’ basic understanding of Mapuche identity and means of representation and will involve participants in the observation of new intercultural collaborative initiatives between the Chilean and Mapuche populations. Participants will hear from academics who are researching these issues and will have significant access to Mapuche community actors and organizers who are engaged firsthand in the intercultural process in Temuco and Nueva Imperial.

Program Objectives

During this seminar, participants will:

• Develop an integrated sense of diverse aspects of Mapuche culture and history.
• Explore various intercultural collaborative initiatives in the current Chilean-Mapuche relationship.
• Identify and analyze areas of dialogue, as well as conflict, in the current Chilean- Mapuche relationship.

Seminar Locations

Based in Valparaíso with excursions to Temuco, Nueva Imperial, Lago, and Budi; participants fly in and out of Santiago.