Indigenous Affairs 1-2/08: The Mapuche and Climate Change in the Chilean Neoliberal Economic System

The Mapuche of Chile are one of South America’s most prominent indigenous peoples, not only in terms of their numbers, which fluctuate around the one million mark, but also because of their long anti-colonial and post-colonial struggle and, more recently, because of their resistance to the neoliberal policies imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship and implemented by democratic governments since Patricio Aylwin took office in 1990. Mapuche communities are facing significant challenges from climate change impacts but, as this article illustrates, these impacts, what they mean and how they are interpreted must be understood within a context of traditional Mapuche ideas of personhood, community and worldviews, and the historical legacy of settlement, contemporary re-source development, and the Chilean neoliberal economic system. The Mapuche concept of the human being.