We still live among you: colonial continuities, biocultural resistance, and the struggle for environmental justice in Upushwea, the territory of the last Yaghan people

This article examines the historical and contemporary struggles of the ancestral inhabitants of Upushwea (Puerto Williams Port), Chile, particularly the Yaghan, Kawéskar, and Selk’nam indigenous peoples, with a particular focus on marine policies affecting the integrity of the Navarino Islands’ reserves. By using the lens of settler colonialism and political ecology, the authors can situate these struggles within the ongoing debates on epistemic violence, neoliberal environmental governance, and the privatization of the commons. The study employs a qualitative approach and an interdisciplinary methodology that combines historiographical analysis, critical political ecology, and interpretive analysis of indigenous oral testimony, with a particular focus on the testimony of an indigenous grandmother as a form of epistemic resistance. The findings demonstrate that colonial logics persist through neoliberal institutions through marine privatization regimes, generating continued dispossession and epistemic erasure. Settler colonialism and the current neoliberal setting continue to reproduce colonial epistemic genocide by marginalizing indigenous knowledge systems while facilitating capitalist expansion into ancestral marine territories. The article argues that recognizing epistemic genocide is crucial for advancing epistemic reparations and environmental justice by acknowledging the existence of indigenous peoples predating settler colonialism in the Chilean Constitution. In line with the UNESCO Convention on the Intangible Cultural Heritage and Chilean legal frameworks, it calls for commons-based governance approaches that protect indigenous biocultural heritage in Upushwea.

1 Introduction

Decolonization, which aims to change the world’s order, is, as can be seen, a program of absolute disorder. But it cannot result from a magical operation, a natural shake-up, or a friendly understanding. Decolonization, as we know, is a historical process: that is to say, it cannot be understood, it is not intelligible, or translucent, except to the exact extent that the historicization movement that gives it form and content is discerned. Frantz Fanon, Los Condenados de la Tierra [The Condemned of the Earth], 1963, p. 36

This section introduces, firstly, an historiographical account of the early settlers’ colonization of the Upushwea (Puerto Williams) and the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve and, secondly, it builds the case of Upushwea as a deeply contested space where Yaghan indigenous rights, environmental sustainability, and capitalist expansion coexist in unsolved tension colliding with the pleas from descendants and legal efforts to preserve ancestral biocultural heritage. The research objective is to call for epistemic reparation and highlight post-colonial dispossession through a case study, comparing the colonialism of early settlers in Puerto Williams and Cape Horn, and demonstrating the continuity of indigenous subjugation in post-colonial times, through the capitalist expansion driven by neoliberal precepts and institutions created in modern Chile.

Therefore, we ask ourselves: What is the causal link between the evident epistemic erasure among the Yaghan population and their continued subjugation to the imperatives of the capitalist order ever since colonial times? This article seeks to answer this question by exploring the accounts given by respondents from the Yaghan community themselves and by testing different theories in process-tracing to unpack the causative links between the Yaghan’s epistemic erasure from colonial times, their subjugation to capitalist precepts, and their ultimate resistance to (neoliberal) subjugation. This case study employs a qualitative methodological approach grounded in phenomenological epistemology and ontological frameworks, utilizing hermeneutic phenomenology to capture the lived experiences, memories, and ethical worldviews of the Yaghan descendants and the last Yaghan grandmother. We connect the inductive and deductive moments where phenomenology enables inductive insight and process tracing supports theoretical testing or deductions. In this article, colonial theories, political ecology, philosophical, ethical, and ontological commons governance theories are reviewed to examine how colonial entrenchment serves as a structural factor contributing to the epistemic erasure of indigenous culture.

There is a historical truth hidden in the various meanings constructed by four ancestral peoples who still coexist in Upushwea (now Puerto Williams), the southernmost territory in the world, located on Navarino Island in Chile. Upushwea is a land originally inhabited by four ancestral peoples: the Yaghan, the Kawésqar, the Selk’nam, and the Mapuche-Williche peoples. The people who had historically inhabited the Onashaga Channel (now known as the Beagle Channel) and Navarino Island were the Yaghans, whose presence there, and still today, dates back approximately 7,000 years. The last people to arrive on Navarino Island were the Huilliche Mapuche, who mainly came from Chiloé. The last ancestral people to arrive on the island were the Mapuche-Williches, considered the first indigenous settlers. By the time of the European settlements, the name of Upushwea was changed in 1953 to Puerto Luisa Port, and in 1956, it was definitively named Puerto Williams Port, to honor the life of an English sailor – John Williams - who was the captain of the schooner ‘Ancud’ and took possession of the Strait of Magellan on the 21^st of September of 1843, with the creation of Fort Bulnes as one of the settlers’ major milestone. Today, Puerto Williams Port, from an administrative point of view, is the capital of the commune of Cape Horn, dependent on the Region of Magallanes (the Mallegan Region) and the Chilean Antarctica. Its population is diverse, and the commune is mainly home to the Chilean Navy, civilians, and scientists who conduct multidisciplinary work at the Cape Horn Subantarctic Centre, inaugurated in 2022. Cape Horn is the southernmost point on Earth, located in the South Cone, near Antarctica, and is known for the tragic hardships that famous explorers had to endure during navigation. Even under conditions of ‘good weather,’ an eerie, sometimes sonorous silence surrounds the vast Southern Ocean that extends southwards, only to be disturbed by the waves lapping against the rocky shores, where seals and sea lions lie lazily, and petrels occasionally split the air with their screeching calls (Chapman, 2017; Figures 1, 2).¹

Figure 1

Figure 1. Geographical location of Upushwea (Puerto Williams). Source: https://www.igm.cl/.

Figure 2

Figure 2. Upushwea (Puerto Williams Port). View from the Subantarctic Center, at Cape Horn, Chile (CHIC). Source: Photograph taken by Juan Mansilla, August 2022.

2 Historization and theoretical conceptual discussion

2.1 The Yaghan people’s suffering under the first wave of European settlers’ colonization and epistemic genocide

As one of the southernmost peoples on the planet, the Yaghan have sailed for more than 7000 years through the channels of the Cape Horn archipelago, south of Tierra del Fuego. Almost naked, they have endured extreme cold and heavy rainfall, maintaining a perpetual connection with the natural and spiritual worlds, as well as with other indigenous peoples, primarily the Selk’nam and the Kawésqar. With a culture rich in essence and ancestral wisdom, they have passed down their cosmology and ceremonies from one generation to the next, accompanied by a unique language. With the arrival of white settlers and their culture in the Southern Cone in the 19th century, during the first wave of European colonization, the traditions of the Yaghan people quickly disappeared, and the population declined. Today, only a few families descended from the Yaghan live in Upushwea, mainly in the village of Ukika on Navarino Island (Palma, 2020).

The Yaghans have become among the most desecrated peoples in the world. Early Western navigators either ignored them or treated them with profound contempt and racism. Even the scientist Charles Darwin referred to them as ‘miserable, stunted, savage, degraded wretches, the most abject creatures I ever saw anywhere,’ adding: ‘who kill and devour their old women rather than kill their dogs.’ He also wrote: ‘To see such men, one would hardly believe them to be our neighbors and inhabitants of the same world.’ Today, the channel is named after the ship that transported them to human zoos in Europe during the second half of the 19th century: Beagle Channel (FitzRoy, 1839).

These human zoos were called ‘Acclimatization Gardens’ and served as venues for exhibitions of indigenous Fuegian and Mapuche peoples between 1881 and 1889. Few voices in academia and research centers have published the brutality suffered by these indigenous peoples. Indigenous mothers and fathers suffered greatly in these acclimatization gardens. They placed their children under their arms like pillows so that they would not be discovered, but once selected, they were taken away despite the protests, cries, and screams of the indigenous people, who threw their hands up in despair (Baez, 2018).

The Yaghan people were well acquainted with their territory and the seasons. They knew where and when to catch seals, shellfish, fish, certain birds, and other food. Aware of sudden changes in climate and the ecosystem, the Yaghan people and their nomadic neighbors from the southern seas, the Kawésqar people, were expert navigators of the southern seas in their rudimentary but safe bark canoes. The human history of the channels and fjords in the sub-Antarctic Magellanic ecoregion remains intertwined with the lives of those who live on the coast. But how and why did the Yaghan end up living in this distant land? Charles Darwin was struck by the fact that the Yaghan people, being ‘primitive hunters’, ‘weak and nomadic’, could have been pushed to the edge of habitable lands by ‘more advanced’ peoples from the north, such as the pre-Inca civilization, or by unknown hunters ‘superior’ to them. Who in their right mind would choose to live in Tierra del Fuego, let alone Cape Horn? According to ancient legends, the Yaghan were forced to seek refuge in the beautiful and inhospitable ‘end of the world.’ But more contemporary explanations question the idea that the Yaghan people could have been forced to live in a hostile environment due to their supposed cultural inferiority and simple lifestyle (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Figure 3. The Beagle and a Yaghan canoe in the Murray Strait. Source: Painting by Conrad Martens, 1832–1836 (Keynes, 1979).

In the 19th century, while Chile was in the process of establishing itself as a nation-state, Europeans kidnapped these ancestral peoples in America, took them to Europe, exhibited them in their exhibitions, or attempted to “civilize” them, and then returned them to their homes under the idea of progress and the racial and material superiority of European colonists. On his first voyage to Tierra del Fuego in the late 1820s, Captain Robert FitzRoy penetrated Onashaga, in the heart of Yaghan territory, in his schooner brig, the Beagle. The Beagle Channel would henceforth bear the name of this European warship. FitzRoy managed to escape from indigenous territory, taking with him four ancestral people—whom he called Fuegians, the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego—and brought them to England. One of these kidnapped people died in captivity. On his second voyage, in 1831, FitzRoy returned with the three surviving Fuegians and a young Charles Darwin, who approved of the manners that the kidnapped indigenous people had acquired by living among the English in boarding schools. The abducted people received English names: Jemmy Button, Fuegia Basket, and York Minster. But their ancestral names were Orundellico, Yokcushlu, and Elleparu (Figure 4).²

Figure 4

Figure 4. Jimmy Button’s evolution and ‘civilization’ process. Source: Painting by Conrad Martens, 1832–1836 (Keynes, 1979).

In the mid-20th century, Yaghan families gathered in Mejillones Bay. With the permanent presence of white men, Chilean settlers, and foreigners, the Yaghans’ lives changed rapidly, and their ancient cultural and ancestral practices gradually faded away. As the Chilean Armed Forces began to arrive in Upushwea, the Yaghan continued to sail their boats in a context in which they were gradually being prevented from returning to their birthplaces or where they had lived during their childhood. The Yaghan were forced to settle in a specific location on Navarino Island, known as Ukika (Figure 5).

Figure 5

Figure 5. Village Ukika, Puerto Williams Port, Chile. Source: Photograph taken by Juan Mansilla, August 2022.

At the same time, the buildings that the Yaghans had erected in Mejillones began to be dismantled by the Chilean Navy between 1973 and 1974, at the start of the dictatorial rule led by General Augusto Pinochet. Private individuals occupied Mejillones Bay, and during this period, some members of the Yaghan community (led by the Yaghan grandmother Cristina Calderón, who died on 16 February 2022) requested permission from the Chilean Navy to return to Mejillones Port. The request was denied as it was argued that the land had been leased and no longer belonged to them. In this regard, it is appropriate to recall a similar letter dated 12 April 1926, when the Yaghans requested permission to live on the lands that had always been theirs, lands that were ceded to others:

(.) Dear Sir, we take the first opportunity to communicate to the commander of the revenue cutter service to publish this letter in the request of our lands as primitive sons of the country; we have in mind to always be in the Mejillones Port because we are domiciled on Navarino Island. We are aware that our lands have been ceded to others, so we are writing to the Territory Governor to bring this to his attention. We do not believe it is fair that we, primitive children of the country, should be deprived of our land, which we are the only owners of it, and that we should be sent to the beach; this is the last straw for a son of the country to have to suffer such injustice (.) there is no reason to throw us out of here because we have no reason to be thrown out, we have good conduct, and we are not capable of trampling the laws; we are very timid, we have a lot of evidence to present about our conduct (.) We bring this to the attention of the Governor of the Territory so that he can do justice and grant us some land in the Mejillones Port, Navarino Island, where we reside and where our houses are located, providing shelter for our children and where they live (Chapman, 2017, p.56).

A careful examination of the situation described in the letter reveals the effect of colonialism on the southern lands. The ancestral peoples who lived on the coasts of the southern archipelagos for more than 7000 years became strangers in their own land. These events were not isolated occurrences in the world, as similar situations occurred during this same period in southern Africa, Canada, Australia, the Amazon region, and the Greater Caribbean (Battiste, 2013; Kopenawa and Albert, 2013; Ngûgîwa, 1986; Trouillot, 1995; Wolfe, 2006).

Furthermore, the violence exerted on these southern indigenous peoples brings to the table the long overdue discussion in the political and academic circles of Chile and Argentina, which has so far been avoided, namely, the discussion of what we understand by the costs of Civilization through the Barbarism exerted on the conquered indigenous populations. This debate can be traced back to colonial times, when foreign and Chilean settlers arrived at Tierra del Fuego and the Navarino Island. Although the legal frameworks acknowledge the existence of indigenous peoples living in Chile, the political will to reform the Constitution to formally recognize them as ancestral peoples remains pending (Vallejos, 2025). Despite evidence abounding on epistemic genocide, the historical truth and ancestral acknowledgement have been lacking, particularly in the Constitution of Chile.

2.2 The ongoing Yaghans’ suffering: a second wave of dispossession in post-colonial times through capitalist expansion in protected areas

Following General Pinochet’s dictatorship, Chile ushered in a renewed sense of hope for the vindication of the subjugated indigenous peoples of Navarino. However, with the dawn of democracy, a new era of neocolonialism was established through technocratic institutions emanating from the capitalist order, whereby natural resources soon became ‘commodities’ (Svampa, 2013, 2015). The appraisal language on the ‘commodities consensus’ (Svampa, 2015) followed the logic of the massification of natural products, through what is known today as intensive, large-scale operations to obtain (cheap) food products (Moore, 2016). In post-colonial times, therefore, the indigenous peoples of Navarino have been increasingly threatened by a different type of subjugation, i.e., through the presence of the salmon farming industries. These have been authorized by the Chilean state to operate within their marine parks and reserves or in their proximity, affecting the quality of their pristine waters, and damaging the esthetic function of the reserve, with a patent impact on the ecological characteristics of the islands. Salmonid companies utilize these common-pool resources (CPRs) for food extraction and execute foreign investment projects that pro-growth officials seek to boost their economies. Transnational corporations exploit the need for employment in local, rural, and impoverished communities, thereby silencing the ecological narrative presented by environmentalists and indigenous peoples, who call for the creation of political-ecological institutions. Within this neoliberal logic, institutions that promote economic growth based on the extraction of natural resources create social tensions when the capital gains obtained from the exploitation of common goods clash with indigenous rights to the conservation of natural reserves, obscuring ancestral practices of small-scale food extraction for subsistence in the face of large-scale food production to satisfy the appetite of global markets by enclosing the commons (Svampa, 2013, 2015). In the words of Zanlungo et al. (2011), attempting to commercially farm a species like salmon, which grows freely in nature, in enclosures that try to reproduce the biological dynamics of rivers, lakes, or open sea constitutes an act of extreme audacity.

Such is the case of the salmonid industry in Chile, which operates in rivers, estuaries, lakes, and natural reserves, such as Navarino, home to the indigenous Yaghans and Kawéskars. The privatization of water for salmonid rearing presents itself as a new wave of neo-colonization, through the capitalist subjugation of the Navarino’s ancestral peoples to sacrifice their marine habitats to meet market demands, raising a philosophical debate surrounding property rights and ecological boundaries in the context of large-scale operations to harvest food nutrients from the seas. This tension exemplifies well-documented cases of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ (Hardin, 1968), such as the major collapse of industry through the Infectious Salmon Anemia virus (ISAv) outbreak in 2007 (Bustos, 2012) following years of insalubrious conditions in practices of highly dense husbandry (Bustos, 2012; Bustos and Irarrázaval, 2016; Iizuka and Katz, 2011). The sanitary crisis meant that the virus propagated horizontally and rapidly spread to most of the salmon ponds, resulting in massive fish mortality and significant financial losses, job destruction, and severe economic consequences, prompting legislators to act in regulating the industry’s sanitary biohazards (Iizuka and Katz, 2011). Despite the severe consequences for public health, the ecological discussion failed to enter the policy debate due to the persistent nature of pro-growth institutions (Bustos, 2012). Legislators resorted to the widely accepted (but increasingly contested) (Barrera et al., 2024) technocentric problem-solving discourse for solutions in line with pro-growth objectives (Bryandt and Wilson, 1998; Bustos and Irarrázaval, 2016).

In 2019, the Yaghans, in resistance, via the campaign slogan ‘Yaghan territory without salmonid industries’,³ fiercely opposed a project of salmonid rearing in the Beagle Channel. Their opposition became a heavily contested field between new salmonid projects and the local Yaghans, who joined forces with the Ushuaia people in Argentina to stop the salmonid project from being approved. The community in Ushuaia argued the project could potentially impact the booming tourist industry in Argentina. In 2023, an article published in Sour Magazine (Sasso, 2023) depicted how the Yaghans had succeeded in resisting the installation of the industry in the Beagle Channel through a global campaign, with internationally renowned chefs such as Lino Adillon calling for a ban on salmon from restaurants’ menus⁴. The magazine article discusses the film ‘Junto al Mar, la Vida’ (Next to the Sea, there is Life), directed by Fernando Saldivia Yáñez, which documents the successful mobilization of the Yaghan community in Puerto Williams Port to prevent the installation of salmon cages in the Beagle Channel in 2019. The documentary captures the moment when Nova Austral’s vessels remove the cages, symbolizing the community’s victory in defending their territory.

Source: Sasso (2023).

Among capitalist advances, sanitary crisis, and indigenous resistance, under the wave of neo-colonial resource exploitation, the infringement of indigenous rights, and indigenous call to secure their natural surroundings invites a philosophical debate among scholars and policymakers to envision new accords that might secure the good governance of the commons by acknowledging that Nature presents its limits to man’s boundless desire to appropriate its fruits (Mundó et al., 2022). The debate necessitates a critical discussion that unveils hidden ecological realities and critically unpacks private resource management and the narratives for ‘sustainability’ goals. ‘Enclosing the commons’ as the salmonid industry does in Navarino necessitates a critical examination of the mainstream rhetoric of growth, especially when another series of the ‘Tragedies of the Commons’ have continued to occur involving transnational interests in Navarino, as it was exposed by the media in 2019 (Forte et al., 2019).⁵

Source: Ladera Sur magazine (2019).

By obscuring the central dynamics of power structures rooted in capitalist environments, the monetary incentives of globalized markets can lead to practices of depletion, overburdening, and exploitation of common goods without ecological controls. According to Mundo et al., a neo-Marxist critique of the salmonid industry in the Navarino’s estuaries and pristine waters for nutrients points to the alienation of the workers in the Global South from the fruits of their labor through exploitative practices, i.e., ‘the dependence of one group for its material welfare on the material deprivation of the other;’ these practices produce the ‘asymmetric exclusion of the exploited through the appropriation of the fruits of their labor by those who own the resources’ (Mundó et al., 2022). These current positions on the management of the commons mask deep environmental injustices in which political and social inequalities act as mediators (Bryandt and Wilson, 1998). These hidden agendas aim to preserve the interests of the world’s capital owners in developing countries, as has historically been the case (Galeano, 1980). In these so-called ‘systemic crises’ resulting from years of environmental pressures and pro-growth institutions, a lax system of rules and enforcement prevailed, as profits became increasingly transnational and local environmental grievances remained largely encapsulated. In just another form of ‘ecological rubble,’ (Gerhart, 2017) the practices of ‘production/destruction’ (Barandiarán and Casey, 2017) in the salmonid industry using large-scale operations for food exports to global markets cause ‘fish decimation and the contamination of the ocean’ through a series of unsustainable practices leading to the ‘ruination’ of the seas (Gordillo, 2017), estuaries, and lakes perpetuating the occurrence of a series of ‘Tragedies of the Commons,’ providing fertile grounds for scrutinizing and unmasking the power struggles behind the narrative of growth by using the lens of political ecology in its various strands, such as development studies, eco-feminism, posthumanism, and the neo-Marxist approach to capitalist dictum (Fairhead et al., 2012).

Source: Greenpeace Chile (2019)

Source: InfoFueguinos, 2018.

The inability to establish stringent political ecology institutions around this sector highlights the forces driving market-oriented practices and the socio-ecological conflicts surrounding this CPR. This tension reinforces the ‘accumulation by dispossession’ theory (Harvey, 2012) which is exacerbated by the local legislators’ failure to develop stringent political ecology institutions as outlined in ‘path dependency’ theories in postcolonial times (Mahoney, 2010). According to Barton and Floysand, scholars ought to scrutinize the period ranging from the first decades of this ‘socio-ecological silence’ surrounding the salmonid industry in the early 90s in Chile, with a strong emphasis on GDP growth, in what is known as the ‘economic imperative,’ until the devastating ISA virus outbreak of 2007, and the ongoing salmon activity in current Chile despite documented sanitary crisis (Barton and Arnt Fløysand, 2010). Power dynamics respond to global groups of interest seeking profit maximization under the auspices of a neoliberal setting initiated during Pinochet’s time, up to the present era. The industry’s sanitary crises can be explained as conflicts emanating from power dynamics and ecological tensions. ‘The human struggle for resources and healthy environments is strongly influenced by how much power societies and individuals hold, and how they use it.’ (Batterbury, 2018). In effect, by recalling that the exotic species Salmon Salar was introduced during the dictatorship, we can understand why a proper risk assessment was unavailable to decision-makers at the time and why, still today, despite the ongoing environmental harm, these companies can operate in national reserves, affecting the esthetic as well as the ecological preservation of Indigenous peoples’ waters and lands. Thus, ecological harm is ‘the outcome of socio-institutional interactions and decision-making processes’ reflecting a power imbalance in political representation to the detriment of the poor peasants, fishermen, and workers engaged in resource extraction industries in practices of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey, 2012). In the words of Raúl Prebisch, ‘there seems to be no option in which to combine the concept of social equity with the vigor of development, popular participation, and the advancement and solidification of the democratic processes’ in dealing with the constraints imposed by the capitalist order, or the countermovement to these in the name of social equality in populist narratives (Prebisch, 1980).

3 Methodology

The research method employs a qualitative approach with a descriptive scope, guided by the reflective hermeneutic paradigm, to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena under scrutiny. The design corresponds to a single case study in Upushwea, Puerto Williams Port, Chile, to study two waves of colonial subjugation of its ancestral peoples: the first during European settlement in southern Chile, and the second during the capitalist expansion under post-Pinochet democratic rule. Case studies do not aim to generalize the results as quantitative designs typically do, but rather, they allow for an in-depth examination of the phenomenon to provide prototypical background information on a given problem, facilitating the development of future research into the observable phenomena. This research employs the case study method, consequently, as an intensive and exhaustive descriptive approach, focusing on a single case (the Yaghan village of Upushwea) to understand the specific phenomenon of epistemic erasure and subjugation in Upushwea. The true objective of the case study is particularisation, not generalization. A specific case is examined in depth, not to see how it differs from others, but to understand what it is and how it functions and thus provide the ‘inductive moments’ of causal inference to understand why and how the phenomenon of epistemic erasure has been produced. In addition to the phenomenological approach, the study provides the technique of process tracing to observe causal links in the deductive moments of theory testing (Bril-Mascarenhas et al., 2017; Schulte-Mecklenbeck et al., 2011).

The participants are members of the Mapuche-Williche Association, an educator of Yagán indigenous language and culture [ELCI], an educator of Kawésqar indigenous language and culture [ELCI], two members of the Yagán community of Villa Ukika in Upushwea, the provincial presidential delegate for Chilean Antarctica, and a representative of the Chilean Navy in Puerto Williams, specifically the head of the Social Welfare Delegation. The selection criteria were based on the need to have accounts from different indigenous actors (interethnic logic) and civil society actors (intercultural logic). In total, there were seven key informants. The instrument used was a semi-structured interview conducted in person with each of them in Upushwea (Puerto Williams Port). To this end, participants provided written informed consent to participate in the study. The interviews lasted an average of 1 h. The interviews were validated through expert judgments. The interviews were then transcribed using Jefferson’s convention. In this first phase, the research was carried out using open coding, which attempts to express data and phenomena in the form of concepts, consisting of fragmenting the data and assigning each fragment a label that is the code, which is organized into categories in a sequential manner, whose criterion was not only the frequency of the term expressed, but also the illocutionary force of the language. In the second phase, axial coding was carried out, which involves a series of procedures that bring the data together in new forms of organization, establishing connections between these categories. Specifically, the methodology consists of purifying and differentiating, in analytical terms, the categories generated in the previous procedure. The codes are related to a main category. Between them, they constitute a complex process of inductive thinking, where the procedure is more focused and directed toward discovering hermeneutic codes.

4 Results

A central category is displayed in this network: ‘Presence of the Yagan People in Upushwea, in the 21St century,’ which is made up of the following codes that were collected from the triangulation of information provided by the participants: (1) cultural value of canoes, (2) signs of settlement colonialism, (3) invisibility of the Yaghan Indigenous people, (4) absence of Yaghan names in streets/decolonization of knowledge, (5) relevance of language/discrimination, (6) difficulty working with the reeds or ‘junquillos,’ (7) reminiscences of family teaching, (8) intergenerational transmission of ancestral cultural knowledge, and (9) recognition of the ancestral value of grandmothers (Figure 6).

Figure 6

Figure 6. Presence of the Yaghan People in the Upushwea in the XXI Century. Source: Mansilla (2025).

The code ‘cultural value of canoes’ is visualized in the following textuality: (.) I did not find basket weaving or anything else either; I think that when I was younger, what was the least difficult was the construction of the canoes, which was more of a rough man’s work rather than sitting around doing the same thing all the time because my grandmother could spend all day weaving, you do not see canoes in the canal anymore (.). [E1:43].

We know that the Kawésqar and Yaghan peoples used canoes. It is worth noting that the use of wooden canoes was abandoned early on among the Yaghan people of Cape Horn and Tierra del Fuego. In 1924, when Martín Gusinde traveled through the area, it seemed that they had stopped being made, although they were still used for short journeys. The installation of sawmills, primarily in Tierra del Fuego, led to the manufacture of European-style plank boats: short, wide, and shallow. By 1943, these boats had already become the predominant mode of transportation among Yaghan families. Likewise, the story depicts a progressive erosion of the ancestral and cultural significance of basketry, meticulously crafted by the grandmothers (Oyarzún, 1943; Figure 7).

Figure 7

Figure 7. Kawésqar dugout canoe. Source: Kawésqar monoxile canoe from Puerto Edén, donated by the Chilean Navy frigate Iquique in 1947. Museo de Historia Natural de Valparaíso, Colección Etnográfica ‘Chile Austral’, inv. no. 2645. (Natural History Museum of Valparaíso, ‘Chile Austral’ Ethnographic Collection, inv. no. 2645) Photograph by Darío Tapia.

The code ‘signs of settlement colonialism’ is clearly expressed in the following fragment of the interview: ‘(.) the Beagle Channel was not called Beagle, well, they say that the Onas passed through there, the ancient Yaghan called the channel on behalf of Onas, they called it Onashaga, but it was because the Onas, those who live in Tierra del Fuego, always passed through (.)’ (E4:65).

Settler colonialism is particularly complex when indigenous peoples, who have always inhabited the land, encounter new settlers arriving to inhabit the place. Indigenous peoples are custodians of creation stories, not colonization stories; they are not ‘in a place, they are the place, the territory’, and that is the unification of epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmologies: ways of being and existing in the world. For settlers, indigenous peoples are an obstacle; arriving at a place that is ‘already inhabited by others’ is a problem, and they stand in their way⁶ (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014). This idea will gradually trigger epistemic genocide, the destruction of the indigenous ethos, and over time, through sophisticated diagrams of control, power, languages, laws, and policies, the settlers will achieve the task of subjugation. Indigenous claims to land emerged under colonial regimes; however, the law redefined land as both property and a resource. Indigenous peoples suffer epistemic erasure, becoming ghosts in a world that is no longer theirs. In this account, it becomes clear that the name Beagle has no connection to the southern hemisphere; it is an imposed name.

The code ‘invisibility of the Yaghan Indigenous people’ arises from the following response from one of the interviewed people: ‘(.) here the history of the Yaghan people is not known, and one realizes that this is where you get the idea that they are invisible (.) also in the same school with people who live in this place and from there understand that they live in a territory that is Yaghan, and although people come and go, they must get to know and know that they are in a Yaghan territory and who the Yaghans are. Despite the Yaghans having lived there for thousands of years, they are almost extinct today (E4:78].

The Indigenous voice navigates between subaltern speech and invisibility, as Indigenous speech about the history of their peoples holds value because it represents an exercise of the right to self-determination through the writing of their history; it can be confused with the value of research. This has contributed to a certain culturalist self-absorption of the research work, losing sight of the colonial situation of Indigenous peoples and the existence of a colonizer who seeks to maintain this situation through a strategy that mutates to achieve his objective.

The code ‘absence of Yaghan names in streets/decolonization of knowledge’ is visualized in the following textuality: ‘(.) but of course perhaps it is good to be aware of the names of the streets in Puerto Williams port, there is no initiative that dares to say that this square belongs to the Yaghans! for example if you take a walk to Porvenir, Porvenir is beautiful, there is a square where there are two Selk’nam’. ([E3:65].

In this context, we deem it reasonable to reflect on the following questions: How can a theoretical approach to the coloniality of knowledge help us understand the social phenomena of an eminently Western-European nature, such as the production and circulation of scientific knowledge? Moreover, how can we discuss the decoloniality of scientific knowledge if the very idea of science is a product of the modern project and rationality? In short, how do we understand the paradox of making our structures of validation of scientific knowledge precisely the most stable forms of the coloniality of knowledge? Colonialism was and continues to be a mechanism of dispossession of the occupation of a people’s territory under the cover of violence and racism. This colonial violence entails the material deployment of systematic and massive aggression, preceded by an occupation and territorial invasion that has also materialized using colonizing bodies, people, machines, and objects (Mansilla and Lima-Jardilino, 2020; Mansilla et al., 2022; Figures 8, 9).

Figure 8

Figure 8. Puerto Williams Port’s Square. Source: Juan Mansilla’s field trip photographs (2022).

Figure 9

Figure 9. Porvernir Square (Selk’nam Square). Source: Juan Mansilla’s field trip photographs (2022).

The code ‘relevance of language/discrimination’ appears in the following transcribed text from one of the interviewees: ‘the language is something that has been lost since there are not many Kawésqar speakers left (0.4) and that is why children are not interested in learning the indigenous language when they grow up, maybe because of shame and I do not know why. In my mother’s case, it was a matter of discrimination; she never wanted to learn the language because she was ashamed (.) [E1: 34].

From the point of view of linguistic anthropology, language is understood as a ‘set of symbolic strategies that form part of the social fabric and of the individual representation of possible or real worlds. Language acquisition involves learning specific words and grammatical structures, as well as a comprehensive, irreplaceable, and irrevocable way of perceiving the world. Once the so-called linguistic acquisition stage has passed, any knowledge the individual may acquire of reality will be mediated by elements obtained from the mother tongue (Luque, 2001).

The code ‘difficulty working with the reeds or the ‘junquillos’ is visualized in the following textuality: to go to work (x) there, we go with my mother. I do not know how to pull out reeds. I can pull out one, but it is hard for me, and the grandparents used to do it very easily. I do not know how to pull out the reeds, and I do not know what technique they used, but it was very difficult for me; it seems easy, but it is very difficult, and then transforming them into baskets is real art, which is now being lost’ (E4:78) (Figure 10).

Figure 10

Figure 10. The reeds or the ‘junquillos’. Source: Juan Mansilla’s field trip photograph (2022).

The Yaghans had a strong connection with the sea, which is reflected in the craft traditions of their descendants, including weaving and basketry made from reeds. This practice is a cultural heritage that is increasingly at risk of disappearing due to the widespread adoption of more sophisticated techniques typical of the cultural agency introduced by contemporary colonizers (Ojeda et al., 2018).

The code ‘reminiscences of family teaching’ is visualized in the following interview excerpt: (.) being born in Puerto Williams (.) I was born, grew up, and studied here (.) because I was a mother so young I could not go out to study (.) because I was a mother so young I could not go out to study, I got married very young too, but since I got married, I have been linked with the Yaghan community a lot; since 1999I have been participating in (x) in Yagan language workshops that my grandmothers did, that Aunt Úrsula did, who is no longer with us (.) but she used to speak Yagan to us in her house in a precarious way (.) She admitted us in her home and taught us; they are very good memories (.) [E1:78].

The role of women has been an indispensable aspect of the canoe cultures of the southern seas, especially among the Yamana people.⁷ When it comes to economics, the Yámana woman’s responsibility as a breadwinner for her family’s livelihood is evident; her interactions in society were marked by the respect she received, which increased with age (Cárdenas et al., 2011).

The code ‘intergenerational transmission of ancestral cultural knowledge’ appears in the following account of one of the interviewees: ‘Hey, I am from the Yaghan people, but I know something because my mother passed it on to me, also my grandmother and so we can join together better but here all of a sudden (0.3) now at school we are asked to work and believe me it is a type of knowledge that is not in school, it is being lost more and more.’ (E5:92].

The indigenous communities have deeply respected and valued the elders, particularly the grandmothers, among the materials of the southern indigenous peoples. In other words, they form the backbone of the intangible heritage of ancestral culture. Intangible cultural heritage corresponds to specific manifestations of culture that inspire human groups with a sense of identity and belonging. It is not limited to the material vestiges of the past but also encompasses what is known as ‘living heritage.’ That is, the knowledge stored in people’s memories, which connects us to the remote past, does not remain in a state of stasis; rather, we speak of living reality and, as such, make them feel part of a community. It links, defines, and identifies them in their place of origin (Merino, 2020).

Finally, the code ‘recognition of the ancestral value of grandmothers’ is visualized in the following text of the empirical sampling of the interviews: ‘In my case, I think I began to take a little more courage, and I say it anyway, as, unfortunately, when my grandmother Cristina left, I still said it as a good joke, why I did not do it before? When she was there, she was incredible; no one knew more than her, tourists took pictures with her because they knew she was a living treasure, I did not know how to take advantage of her at all’ (E5:69].

Who is Cristina, the grandmother named in the story? Cristina Calderón Harban, mother of nine (9) children and grandmother of fourteen (14) grandchildren, did not teach any of her descendants to speak because the children refused to learn it due to discrimination, which led to the progressive loss of the Yaghan ethos. In 2009, Grandmother Cristina received the distinction of ‘Living Human Treasure’ for being, at that time, the most genuine and authentic depository and propagator of the languages and customs of the Yaghan people (Servicio Nacional del Patrimonio Cultural [National Cultural Heritage Service], 2022).

This fair recognition was granted by the National Council of Culture and the Arts of Chile within the framework of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage (UNESCO, 2003). Cristina and her sister Úrsula were the last representatives who fully participated in their ancestral customs and language. Until her death at the age of 93 in February 2021, Cristina Calderón continued to lead the Yaghan community on Navarino Island (Figure 11).⁸

Figure 11

Figure 11. Cristina Calderón, April 2017. Source: Martin Bernetti/AFP.

5 Discussion of results

Fieldwork and interviews revealed that the Yaghan communities have been systematically excluded from decision-making processes that directly affect their ancestral territories since colonial times. The findings of the interviews reveal that settler colonialism in southern Chile is not an anomaly, but it reconfigures itself as a logic of domination and governance from colonial times to post-colonial modernity in Chile. From colonization and throughout postcolonial times, Yaghans continue to be subjected to the settlers’ imperatives, first the imperative of ‘good manners’ as with the deliberate epistemic erasure of indigenous practices, as in the case of Button in the early colonization stage, and then, with the imperative of ‘economic growth’ through the desecration of their marine reserves and the series of the ‘tragedies of the commons’ brought about by the unregulated salmonid industry in the Navarino Reserve and elsewhere around the Southern Seas (estuaries and fjords of the Southern Tierra del Fuego) (Barton and Arnt Fløysand, 2010). This pattern reinforces the theories of colonization posited by James Mahoney, which focus on colonial coercion and the structural reproduction of domination through the institutions of settlers in Spanish America (Mahoney, 2010). This is exemplified in the case of modern Chile, where technocratic institutions replicate colonial subjugation in capitalist settings, despite the absence of stringent political ecology institutions, as seen on Navarino Island. Political ecology through neo-Marxist approaches highlights the tension between growth and ecology, exposing the institutional mechanisms that facilitate the privatization of the Commons, silencing the voices of the Yaghans in the name of biocultural legacies (Mundó et al., 2022).

The sanitary and environmental crisis of the salmonid industry is not an isolated case of weak governance. These are symptoms of what Martinez-Alier describes as ecological distribution conflicts, where marginalized groups bear the brunt of environmental degradation imposed by capital-driven institutions (Martinez-Alier, 2014).

This article demonstrates that the struggle for the Yaghan’s survival is not merely cultural. It is also territorial, epistemic, and politically ecological. The stories of burned dwellings, navigation bans, and spiritual exile mark the emotional topography of a landscape still occupied by settler rationality and utilitarian views in contrast to indigenous cosmovision and ecological interconnectedness with Nature. Their narratives in the interviews are phenomenological data and historical documentation, affirming that colonial violence has not ended for the Yaghans, but it has only shifted in the form of subjugation. In the words of Patrick Wolfe, ‘settler colonialism’ is ‘a structure, not an event,’ i.e., the foreign and Chilean settling in Upushwea managed to establish a ‘colonial project, erecting a new colonial society on the expropriated land base’ and the ‘colonized population is eliminated from that land’ (Wolfe, 2006).

By employing a qualitative approach through phenomenology and process tracing, the findings help identify how the first stage of colonization and the second wave of dispossession in modern Chile are the result of a logic of institutionalized exclusion. To assess the first stage of colonization, the phenomenological lens provides accounts of distinct voices, leading to the inductive moment in causal inference, helping to identify the causative link between colonization and epistemic erasure, as well as the evident epistemic resistance, as seen in the last of the Yaghans’ accounts prompting the title of this article: ‘We still live among you’. To verify theories related to post-colonial trends of dispossession and subjugation, the salmonid account on Navarino Island points to James Mahoney’s theories of institutional violence embedded in institution-building, which emanates from colonial times and has long-lasting effects, often under the guise of legality and efficiency. Through process tracing, the deductive moments of causal inference in the 2^nd wave help to link the Yaghan suffering to post-colonial institutions, which highlight the tension in facilitating their cultural recognition (in the Constitution); this link also points to the need for establishing a new institutional paradigm, a biocultural order grounded in repair, and around an ecological wisdom or a commons-based governance, aligned to the protection of their Natural Reserves, which reaffirms the account given by Cristina Calderón, as their land and the seas are the peoples, and the peoples embody the land and the sea (Zárraga, 2022).

The Yaghan grandmother’s testimonies are not exclusively memory-based stories. In the words of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, these are ‘acts of resurgence’ (Betasmosake, 2017). These are small, powerful refusals to disappear, despite settlers’ laws that saw no land restitution or land governance devolved to Yaghans. Cristina Calderón’s interview helps frame the epistemic violence of marine zoning – not just territorial loss – as it is the erasure of pedagogy and ethics, with stories being lost and customs being erased. According to Simpson, the Chilean state, by recognizing the Yaghans’ heritage, conveniently ‘rescues the colonial settlement colonialism’ (Betasmosake, 2017).

The Yaghan grandmother’s testimony is about ‘presence,’ and her voice calls for new institutions rooted in reciprocity and memory, echoing her advocacy for governance built from the ground up. In the words of Wolfe, marine concessions erase Yaghan sovereignty, because through the settler’s colonial structure, rationalized through legality and development imperatives and growth institutions, reparation is obstructed, and the emergence of biocultural institutions is prevented from being rooted in indigenous ethics (Wolfe, 2006).

This view aligns with Mahoney’s idea of colonial coercion embedded in institutional legacies stemming from colonial times and maintained in the postcolonial era. Therefore, indigenous peoples are not only excluded: they are also erased structurally, devoid of political agency as political subjects, perpetuating the structural forces accounting for the Yaghan’s current ‘dispossession’, citing Harvey’s words. Just as with the difficulty of establishing political ecological institutions in the salmonid industry or adopting a commons-based stewardship, the State should not only pursue language policy, museums, or symbolic inclusion while simultaneously zoning the Yaghans out of their own marine Reserves in Navarino, because that contradiction precisely helps to continue to erase the indigenous spatiality through technocratic rationality (Harvey, 2012).

In that sense, the words of Saldaña-Portillo (2016) are adequately applied to the Yaghan’s subjugation to colonization, because current indigenous dispossession in marine areas is about rendering the Yaghan territories ‘empty’ by legitimizing their lands into resource zones.

In the words of Mahoney, colonial violence is institutionalized through the very structures that claim to civilize. Thus, echoing Cristina’s words, the last Yaghan grandmother, ‘our sea is our body,’ or the call from Yaghans is to continue their resistance to settler-colonial mappings that divide, abstract, and erase the memory of their ancestral land and culture. Cristina’s words are a cosmology where the sea and self are entangled. Cristina’s statement to the world is a moral claim to territorial governance or even a moral sovereignty based on affect, not ownership alone. Cristina’s words refer to a relational epistemology in which space is kin, not a resource to be exploited.

6 Conclusion

The struggle for Yaghans is a survival to live among their subjugators: us. By living still among us, Yaghans and Cristina’s words claim their heritage to breathe not only in the cultural, territorial, epistemic, or political arena, but in all aspects of life, and in the relational conversation with the land and the sea. The need for stringent environmental governance and the call for implementing biocultural prerogatives established under UNESCO and the Chilean law encompass the reparation call to fully expand the biocultural and epistemic justice within the Chilean (environmental) law, which, in the case of marine concessions, should see the establishment of stringent political ecology institutions. Justice, in this sense, also requires the recognition of epistemic genocide and the demand for legal redress. The Chilean State should fully implement the ILO Convention 169, which officials have already signed, to conduct comprehensive consultations on salmonid projects near or in proximity to their ancestral lands and marine areas (International Labour Organization, 1989).

The inclusion of indigenous voices in the planning, zoning, and marine conservation must be in place at all scales of societal life to ensure their political representation and agency. This applies to the protection of intangible heritage under the UNESCO frameworks. There must be a constitutional recognition of indigenous peoples as political subjects, and a clear acknowledgment that their presence predates the settler colonialism, with the subsequent subjugation and epistemic erasure. The epistemic genocide of the indigenous peoples of southern Chile constitutes a deviation from human rights anchored under UNESCO’s protection umbrella to this day. Reparations, acknowledgement, and protection granted at the constitutional level are a starting point, but biocultural heritage involves the active pursuit and implementation of actions that reverse their dispossession. Devolution is inextricably linked to their right to conserve their marine habitats as one of the Yaghans’ ultimate heritages.

Data availability statement

The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because no restrictions. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to Juan Mansilla am1hbnNpbGxhQHVjdC5jbA==.

Ethics statement

The participants provided written informed consent to participate in the study.

Author contributions

JM: Validation, Investigation, Software, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing, Resources, Writing – original draft, Formal analysis, Methodology, Visualization, Data curation. SS: Investigation, Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Data curation, Visualization, Methodology, Conceptualization, Formal analysis.

Funding

The author(s) declared that financial support was not received for this work and/or its publication.

Conflict of interest

The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Generative AI statement

The author(s) declared that Generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript.

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Footnotes

1. ^Cape Horn Center, devoted to the subantarctic, biocultural conservation, located in Puerto Williams Port, Chile. For more information, visit the official site athttps://capehorncenter.com/.

2. ^^thButton was put under observation by the crew due to the docility of the man’s character in comparison to the rest of his people and because Button was a quick learner, which came to fit the stereotype of the ‘good salvage.’ Visual records of Button were made by the painter Conrad Martens, traveling with the expedition, pointing to the display of progressive ideas in opposition to barbaric times embedded in the various narratives/discourses given during the 19 century. Button’s portrait was made in two different time frames; the first one was in 1831; according to the Indigenous stereotype, both face and nose are shown to be broad, with high cheekbones, and with strongly marked, sunk deep eyes.

3. ^For more information, visit the link https://www.iccaconsortium.org/es/2019/03/28/la-comunidad-indigena-yaghan-de-la-isla-navarino-chila-llama-por-apoyo/

4. ^More information at https://heatherjasper.com/patagonia-chile-argentina/fight-against-salmon-farms

5. ^Forged reports by Nova Austral on fish mortality and other pathogens were concealed from the regulatory body SERNAPESCA in 2019. Nova Austral not only had to face legal proceedings from the Chilean Prosecutor, but the firm was also stripped of its ASC logo. This has raised doubts about the efficacy of this certification. Revise the analysis at: https://www.fishfarmingexpert.com/chile-nova-austral-sernapesca/chilean-farmer-facing-legal-action-over-mortality-figures/1177738

6. ^This book rigorously develops the concept of ‘settler colonialism’, which is highly relevant to the argumentative development of our research.

7. ^Yamana People is the Anglo-Saxon Anglican missionary variation of the concept Yaghan. Ultimately, this linguistic variant came into frequent use as well. In fact, the original title of Anne Chapman’s book is Yamana People. In any case, the concept Yaghan is the ancestral concept accepted by the indigenous people (Yagán in Chilean Spanish).

8. ^Zárraga (2022). Cristina Calderón. Memorias de mi Abuela Yagana (Memories of my Yaghan Grandmother.) Santiago de Chile: Liberalia publishers. In this work, Cristina Caldero’s granddaugher revives the relational knowledge and calls for a revitalization of the Yaghan culture and language amongst the Yaghan community.

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