people of the land

The past few weeks have been busy and incredible. Last week, the other students participating in the interexchange program and I had the chance to live with indigenous families in the countryside of southern Chile...I can´t begin to explain how beautiful and unique this experience was... the people we lived with are Mapuche, which in their language called Mapudungun, means "People of the Land" (mapu= land/earth and che=people).

Similar to the history of Native Americans in the United States as well as all of Latin America, the Mapuche had been living on the land for thousands of years before the arrival of the European conquistadores (in this case, Spanish). Their territory stretched from Buenos Aires to the glaciers at the southern tip of the continent up to current day Santiago. They were in general a peaceful hunter gatherer people, though out of all the indigenous people of Latin America, the Mapuche resisted the Spanish colonialization the longest, up until about 200 years ago. Over the years, their vast territory has slowly been taken from them, and now the majority reside in the southern region (VIII and XI regions) of Chile near Temuco. The Mapuche region is absolutely beautiful. The land, situated between the two mountain regions in Chile - the Andes and the mountains on the Coast - is extremely fertile, and one quickly loses oneself in the midst of the rolling hills and timberlands.

The family with whom I stayed were a young couple in the 30s with an 8 year old son named Matias (Matthew) and a baby on the way. They live about a 30 minute walk into the countryside from the local elementary school where we reunited everyday to visit with the Mapuche students and learn about intercultural education. I enjoyed the escape from the pace and pollution of Santiago to a more simple life in the countryside, falling asleep to the sound of silence and waking with the rooster´s crow, eating organically cultivated honey and fruit and veggies from their farm (as they are a subsistance farming people) and spending the afternoons relaxing with the family or sitting in a open field, taking in everything.

After this past week I have a deeper awareness of the importance of preserving and appreciating indigenous cultures such as that of the Mapuche, who are so often overlooked as backwards or behind the times from the lens of more "modern societies." Despite the struggles these people face, in regards to the loss of their land and cultural identity with globalization and neoliberalism, they have a resilience about them that stems from the centuries long fight they have led against colonial subjection and subjugation. Experiencing their beautiful culture firsthand has kindled something somewhat reslient within me as well, a rejection of the notion that one culture is somehow better than another because of its gunpower. Furthermore, despite what some may consider a rudimentary lifestyle, the respect the Mapuche have for the land is something our modern societies could learn more than a thing or two from... to take from the earth only what we need and replenish/honor it to me is far from a backwards idea, and I have a feeling that in the decades to come with the growing global energy crisis, the practices of these so-called archaic cultures will prove to be more of an objective truth than once previously supposed.