This project is supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
”Having to explain myself, thinking myself, is something violent.” The reflection of Miguel Pantoja, a resident of Rio Grande, an Argentine city in Tierra del Fuego, echoes the sentiments of a whole generation that, like him, is trying to understand, rescue and reconstruct its identity — the identity of a people. “I’m not a descendant, I’m Selk’nam,” he says.
Pantoja is a member of the Comunidad Rafaela Ishton, formed in the 1980s as part of a struggle for the rights of this South American indigenous people, also known as Ona. Starting with the recognition that it was not extinct: it is a living people.
Argentina, where the Pantoja group was one of the first of its kind to gain legal jurisdiction, in 1995 recognized the Selk’nam as an indigenous people. Today, more than 600 families, totaling about a thousand people, identify themselves in this way in the country. In Chile, however, the State does not legitimate the existence of the Selk’nam as a people. The Comunidad Covadonga-Ona, which obtained legal jurisdiction in 2015, is fighting for the inclusion of the ethnic group in the list of the main ones recognized by the Indigenous Law 19,253, of 1993.
In the 2017 Census, 1,144 Chileans identified themselves as Selk’nam. Covadonga-Ona, which has more than 50 members and their families, totaling about 200 people, expects recognition to be confirmed in early 2022, the deadline given by the State to the community to prove that it is alive.
The history of this people dates back 10,000 years, when a group established itself on this last continental frontier, the “finis terrae”, in the extreme south of South America.
501 years ago, the Portuguese navigator Fernão de Magalhães, leading a Spanish expedition, discovered a sea passage in the region, then unknown to Europeans. Groping in search of a passage to the Indies, the ship Victoria was already below the 52nd parallel when, under the fog, bonfires were sighted—a sign of human presence. The navigators did not know it, but that land was called Karukinka (our land) and the fire was lit by the Selk’nam people to face the cold and cook.
Magalhães named the place Tierra del Fuego in honor of the flames and smoke from the many bonfires of the natives on the coast of Ilha Grande seen from his vessel. The strait that separates the archipelago from the mainland and connects the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean (also named by the navigator), was named Magellan. His discovery united the world in the first globalization of modern society.
Long before Tierra del Fuego was divided between Argentina and Chile (in a treaty signed in 1881), several adventurers tried to occupy Karukinka. It was a wild and inhospitable environment, with short summers and long winters, inhabited by groups that lived in a nomadic way: Selk’nam, Tehuelche, Yagane, Haush and Kawésqar.
First came gold-seeking explorers—and they brought in germs that caused epidemics of tuberculosis, syphilis, and respiratory infections, the same biological weapons that decimated other Amerindian peoples. Then, in the 19th century, other Europeans and their descendants would arrive, this time to stay. They were farmers, who saw the region as the perfect place for raising sheep and producing wool and meat, and Salesian missionaries. The encounter between those who brought the culture of domesticated plants and animals with hunter-gatherers meant a death sentence for the latter. A kind of genocide that, in 20 years, caused the almost complete extermination of the population of Tierra del Fuego. Almost.
The invasion cost the Selk’nam their land and freedom from nomadic culture. Conflicts with farmers, who saw in private property a leap forward, were intensified with the slaughter by indigenous people of domesticated sheep — easier prey than wild guanacos. Bounty hunters cut off Selk’nam’s ears caught behind sheep, as evidence of receiving pay; repeat offenders had their heads cut off.
The conflict was unbalanced, and soon indigenous men were exterminated. Elderly people, women and children were eventually captured and sold as domestic servants or sent to Salesian missions in Rio Grande (Argentine sector) and on Dawson Island (Chilean sector). Women were repeatedly raped and forced to marry non-natives. Diseases, malnutrition, evangelization, loss of culture and separation from families decimated the population.
When the farmers arrived, there were about 4,000 Selk’nam; in 1930 there were just over a hundred. The ethnicity was considered extinct in the books and in the history written by the winners.
Accounts from the Salesians describe the Selk’nam as a people of incredible abilities. They were able to see far beyond what Europeans could see with binoculars and were endowed with phenomenal hearing. They learned other languages easily, exhibited above-average creative ability and a talent for painting and drawing. His imagery led to admirable stories and a religious culture. Furthermore, they were admittedly kind and kind.
A century of dictatorships passed without the Selk’nam genocide being addressed in Argentina and Chile. That started to change in the 2010s, when the internet connected users looking for their origins. Now, together, the Selk’nam face the process of rewriting the official account, of decolonizing and denaturalizing the historical perspective, recovering and reframing what happened. They have created centers—such as Rafaela Ishton in Argentina and Covadonga-Ona in Chile—where family experiences, stories and memories are shared and truth is confronted.
“I always knew I was a Selk’nam, but that didn’t mean living as one or understanding how to do it. There are complex layers,” says Hema’ny Molina, president of the Chilean community. “For many years there was a feeling of emptiness and loneliness, as we didn’t know of other families. Who am I going to talk to? Who am I going to tell? Will people believe me?”
Over the past decade, many have undertaken emotional and physical journeys to learn about the tragic history of the ancestors. “Our first glimpse of Selk’nam is always painful, because what they tell in the books is not the story we know,” says Molina, who lives in Santiago. “Most of us go through a spiritual quest to fill the void, the feeling of not fitting in, of not belonging, until we find our culture. The answers are there, even though we are not in Tierra del Fuego.”
Most Selk’nam have lived far from Patagonia since the surviving children were taken from the far south. The fight for recognition has the help of researchers from the Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez and the Universidad de Magallanes. Alejandro Núñez Guerrero, director of this one in Porvenir (Chile), has been making agreements so that more field studies are carried out and so that the Selk’nam are more present in the place where they first settled.
A recent survey, for example, attested that the settlers’ first ranch was built on the Chilean side of Tierra del Fuego, not on the Argentine side, as imagined.
Our first glimpse as selk’nam is always painful, because what the books tell is not the story we know
The few Selk’nam who remained in Patagonia were strongly marked by this story. Survivors, like Miguel Pantoja’s great-grandmother, raised their children without emphasizing ethnicity. “To protect the next generations, the elders didn’t transmit the language. That’s why I don’t speak the Selk’nam language,” he says. Even today, some inhabitants of Ilha Grande do not assume the ascendancy. “The stigma of death was so strong that the Selk’nam didn’t want to be indigenous,” adds Molina. Denying ethnicity was a way to survive.
Hector Chogue, former vice-president of the Covadonga-Ona community, and his brother José Luis Vásquez Chogue, secretary of the group, discovered they were Selk’nam three years ago, when they saw their grandfather’s name in a notebook of Salesian birth records from Dawson Island. The recent journey of self-discovery has also become a tour of meetings with Chilean politicians to incorporate the Selk’nam into the Indigenous Law. “It is difficult to say who I am, because the State does not recognize us”, says José Luis.
In the meantime, everyone is learning to be Selk’nam. José Luis was in Tierra del Fuego for the first time in October this year — journalists were unable to accompany the visit. “It was an emotion and an energy that I had never experienced. I tried to see and experience the place with my grandfather’s eyes,” he says. The Chogue brothers and their family learned a few years ago that their surname is of French origin, coming from the man who, in the 1840s, adopted their grandfather, baptized by the Salesians as Carmel. “What happened to the Selk’nam cannot be forgotten by Chilean society”, says Hector, who says he is prepared to make the ethnic group stop being anonymous. “We have a responsibility to make our culture visible.”
But fighting for recognition as Selk’nam does not mean wanting to be seen as an indigenous from the past or a museum piece. The search is for an identity of someone who is also integrated into modern society, on a journey to rebuild family history. Hema’ny Molina is interested in the truth as she is, with no romantic notions.
“People want to see us as before, but we grew up like everyone else, we have cell phones, computers, jobs, we pay taxes,” she says. Pantoja reinforces the need for people to abandon racial stereotypes. “In spite of everything, we don’t die, but we change. We are alive and present in our land.”
It’s hard to say who I am because the state doesn’t recognize us
.
