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ABSTRACT
The spatial disciplines have slowly started to acknowledge their complicity with Indigenous dispossession in settler colonial contexts. Since early contact, instruments of land appropriation like surveying, mapping, town building, zoning, and place-naming have helped legitimise settler presence and imposed Western spatial relations over Indigenous territories. Indigenous planning – understood as planning by, for, and with Indigenous peoples grounded in their worldviews, values, and priorities – pre-dates and stands in stark contrast to dominant planning discourses. This paper offers methodological reflections on a participatory action research project that seeks to rebuild a Mapuche spatial planning knowledge base that still exists despite state-led attempts to disarticulate Mapuche socio-spatial relations. Within the logic of Indigenous resurgence, we consider the power of land-based walking and storytelling methodologies as tools to rebuild Mapuche spatial planning. By deepening embodied community knowledge of the land, renaming places, and (re)producing community-owned knowledge that refuses to be shared outwardly such methodologies not only contest the legitimacy of Western planning systems, but reassert the principles that have long guided Mapuche spatial planning and support the reconstruction of Mapuche territory. We also explore the limits of such approaches and whether they can reorient the ethics of Western planning towards Indigenous priorities.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Wepu Lafkenche Association and its member communities for their interest in partnering with us in the development of this project, and for engaging in the conversations, mapping sessions, and walks on the land that inform these early reflections. We are also grateful to our Research Assistants in Chile and Canada – Marco Bizama, Rachel Bregman, Víctor Caniuñir, Catalina Cardenas, Meredith Gillespie, Brandon Umpherville – who have provided professional and committed support at different stages of the project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Acknowledging translation limitations and differences in how territory is conceptualised in the Anglo and Latin American literatures (Haesbaert and Mason-Deese Citation2020; Halvorsen Citation2019), here we use the term “spatial planning” as the English equivalent to ordenamiento territorial, understood as the “formulation, content, and implementation of spatial public policies” (Yiftachel Citation1998), generally led by national governments to regulate land management, use, and control in the context of Western nation-states. We use the term “planning” to refer to the broader notion of planificación, which encompasses the praxis of managing the physical aspects of human-environment relations (spatial planning), but also community and environmental planning.
2. An important clarification note regarding the terms territorio (territory) and tierra (land) in discussions about Indigenous dispossession. In Spanish usage, tierras indígenas (literally Indigenous lands) usually refers to bounded stretches of land Indigenous peoples have tenure over, historically or today, both through customary tenure systems or state-sanctioned property regimes (Llancaqueo and Víctor Citation2005). This is different from territorios indígenas (literally Indigenous territories), which usually refer to the spaces Indigenous peoples have inhabited historically and ancestrally, and where they have developed particular ways of life grounded in Indigenous worldviews and knowledges – regardless of whether they currently have land tenure over those spaces or not (Toledo Llancaqueo Citation2005; Melin, Mansilla, and Royo Citation2019). The term has thus an ontological and political connotation connected to Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. However, recent Indigenous movements in former British colonies have used the term “Indigenous lands” in ways that echo the Spanish use of the term “Indigenous territories.” Given this, here we use the English terms “Indigenous lands” and “Indigenous territories” interchangeably when talking about the Spanish notion of territorios indígenas, unless we indicate otherwise.
3. The Lafkenche are Mapuche people from the coastal areas of wallmapu, Mapuche territory.
4. From a Mapuche perspective, belonging to the nation is grounded in the existence of a common territory, historical past, language, and culture, which are shared among the family lineages that have spread over wallmapu and who according to the Mapuche worldview, have emerged from the land itself.
5. Fvchakeche is a word in the Mapuzugun language that refers to elders, who are important actors in Mapuche culture. The term is closely connected to the notion of kimche or wise people, in the sense of fvchakeche being the holders of Mapuche knowledge. Both terms imply a sense of respect towards older adults in their capacity as knowledge holders.
6. Although some Indigenous studies scholars question the concept’s applicability to Latin America – particularly given Patrick Wolfe’s (Citation2006) land-labour divide – we side with those who extend settler colonialism beyond the analysis of British expansion only (Castellanos Citation2017; Gott Citation2007; Nahuelpán et al. Citation2021).
7. The authors come to this work from different standpoints that shape our understandings in important ways. Miguel Melin is a Mapuzugun native speaker and bilingual intercultural educator, who has extensive experience leading efforts to reconstruct the Mapuche nation from within a paradigm of Mapuche knowledge and law. Natalia Caniguan is an anthropologist and scholar of Mapuche descent, whose practice and research have focused on Mapuche knowledge and intercultural relations. Magdalena Ugarte is a Chilean planning scholar who critically explores the relationship between planning and settler colonialism, whose settler ancestors contributed to the colonisation of wallmapu. While we could write an entire reflective paper discussing positionality in the context of this work, the reflections here centre on our shared commitment to putting academic planning work at the service of Mapuche priorities specifically and Indigenous territorial justice more broadly.
8. The project was conceived to last three years (2019–2022), but has been extended due to travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the work takes place in the specificity of the Tirua region due to pre-existing relationships with some of the research partners, the guiding principles of Mapuche spatial planning described earlier are found across wallmapu. Therefore, the methodological approach and insights emerging from the project will have relevance to other areas facing similar realities.
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Notes on contributors
Magdalena Ugarte
Magdalena Ugarte is an Assistant Professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University (recently renamed), where she teaches social planning, planning theory, and public policy. Her work critically examines the relationship between planning, settler colonialism, and other forms of institutionalised dispossession, particularly the role of law and regulatory frameworks in such processes. Her current work with Mapuche partners in Chile engages with questions of Indigenous planning and Indigenous law.
Miguel Melin
Miguel Melin is a member of and spokesperson for the Ralipitra lof on Mapuche territory. He is one of the founders of the Mapuche Territorial Alliance, a grassroots organization that promotes Mapuche cultural and political resurgence. He is a speaker of Mapuzugun (Mapuche language) and a bilingual intercultural teacher. He has led several community-based research projects with Mapuche communities and co-authored several publications about Mapuche cultural knowledge, including Mapuche law, Mapuche land use planning, and ancestral forms of Mapuche mapping in order to support the territorial demands of his people.
Natalia Caniguan
Natalia Caniguan is a Research Associate with the Centre for Indigenous and Intercultural Research (CIIR) funded by Chile’s National Agency for Research and Development. She has a MA in Local, Regional, and Human Development and has extensive expertise in intercultural governance in Mapuche contexts, including solid training in qualitative research methodologies. Her Master’s research work and subsequent scholarly activities have focused on intercultural relations and Mapuche knowledge.