How do different ways of inhabiting a territory coexist in the face of extractivism? The tensions between dominant Chilean state-society structures and Mapuche territorial lifeways have long manifested across the central and southern regions of Chile, and they persist today in renewed forms. These tensions are deepened by extractive projects promoted by both state institutions and private corporations—national and foreign alike—that intervene in rivers, forests, and lands, disrupting the coexistence of the multiple beings and forces that constitute the territory. Such processes are often justified in the name of strengthening the economy of the “nation,” or that of specific economic actors—sometimes foreign corporations from wealthy countries, sometimes domestic elites—frequently at the expense of spiritual, cosmological, and foundational practices that sustain Indigenous communities.
The dilemma between protecting natural resources and promoting projects with environmental impact is often justified, within far-right discourses in Chile, as positive insofar as such projects are presented as a source of employment for local inhabitants. These are short-term benefits, while the capital that accumulates in the long term does not necessarily translate into improvements in the lives of those who inhabit the territory. In other words, those who benefit economically often reside outside the territory, whereas local communities—together with the human and more-than-human beings that constitute the ecosystem—are affected, displaced, and even harmed to the point of disappearance.
These questions become even more relevant at a moment when Chile is set to be governed by the far-right following the recent presidential elections, which prioritize economic growth and Western civilizational values. In such a context, it is difficult and concerning to imagine what degree of respect non-Western worldviews will receive in the defence of the land and water of Chile.
The president-elect, José Antonio Kast, has emphasized the importance of economic growth at all costs. Ecological and environmentalist perspectives are often dismissed and framed as ideologies that limit the country’s development: “people come before the environment and animals,” as he stated at the VII Transatlantic Summit in Brussels in February 2026. The future head of state interprets “feminism, environmentalism, indigenism, and other “isms” as ideological threats from the left rather than as legitimate public policy agendas” (Arenas, 2026, para. 3).[1] This defence of human centrality is reflected in the public policies he proposes to implement during his government.
Although Kast has spoken about the importance of science for development, the relevance of ancestral knowledge and its value in environmental care are at risk within the model of the State he proposes, in which the human occupies a higher hierarchical position—one that may affect territories and, in particular, the waters of southern Chile.
Democratic debate concerning the environment and environmental rights constitutes a legitimate cause grounded in a long-standing and ongoing struggle. However, according to this narrative, such causes lose their democratic standing, transforming “feminist, environmental, or identity-recognition demands into civilizational threats, delegitimizing them as if they were not part of a legitimate democratic debate” (Arenas, 2026, para. 19).[2]
The Epistemic Function of Indigenous Consultation
Although the Indigenous Consultation Law has been in force since 1994—a right that ensures Indigenous peoples can participate in and express their views on decision-making processes concerning State measures that may affect them—the effectiveness of this right remains in question:
Prior Indigenous consultation applies to legislative or administrative acts that may generate a significant and specific impact on Indigenous peoples or affect the exercise of their ancestral traditions and customs, religious, cultural, or spiritual practices, or their relationship with Indigenous lands (Poder Ambiental, n.d.; translated by the author).[3]
The limited effectiveness of this right cannot be explained solely as a matter of poor implementation or administrative shortcomings. Rather, it raises deeper questions about how participation is understood and what kinds of knowledge are considered legitimate within State decision-making processes. In this regard, Chilean legal scholar Felipe Andrés Guerra Schleef proposes that the right to prior consultation should be understood not merely as a procedural guarantee, but as a mechanism with an epistemic function. As Guerra and Sánchez Sandoval (2021) explain, this “dual epistemic function consists in enabling the collective participation of Indigenous peoples as agents of their own valid knowledge, and in operating as a mechanism for making impacts visible in order to protect Indigenous rights in contexts of cultural diversity” (p. 25).[4]
In this sense, consultation potentially creates the possibility for Indigenous peoples to contribute knowledge, territorial understandings, and cosmological perspectives that would otherwise remain excluded from institutional frameworks. From this perspective, the problem is not only whether consultation takes place, but whether Indigenous knowledge systems are recognized as valid forms of evidence in shaping public policy. When consultation is reduced to a formal step within extractive governance, its transformative potential is neutralized.
At present, Chile is living through a moment in which it is especially relevant to remember that we inhabit a society where First Nations continue to exist and maintain customs, beliefs, ways of inhabiting, and understandings of territory that differ from Western ones. It is therefore urgent to safeguard respect for these forms of knowledge, which have historically been undervalued by Chilean society and are now threatened by a government whose agenda is Western-oriented and strongly aligned with capitalist logics.
Itrofil Mogen and Mapuche Territorial Relationality
Among the Indigenous peoples of southern and austral Chile are the Mapuche, Chono, Kawésqar (Alacalufes), Yagán (Yámana), Selk'nam (Ona), and Aonikenk (Tehuelche). The Mapuche inhabit large parts of southern Chile. Although Mapuche is often translated as “people of the land,” Jorge Weke—one of the founders of the Koyagtun Koz Koz (Mapuche Parliament of Koz Koz) and a werken (messenger) in Mapuzungun—suggests a broader understanding: “people who come from the territory—water, air, forest, sea, mountains—energies that come from the entire cosmos and spirituality” (Weke, 2017).
In this sense, mapu does not refer merely to land; it denotes a living territory that includes all beings and forms of life, encompassing spiritual and energetic dimensions. This socio-natural relationality is fundamental to understanding the concept of Itrofil Mogen, which is central to Mapuche thought. Mapuche people do not conceive of themselves as separate from nature; rather, they understand themselves as part of it.
As Mapuche writer Elicura Chihuailaf Nahuelpan explains:
For our communities, this concept refers both to biodiversity and to the biosphere, yet it is not limited to the natural world—it also encompasses the social and cultural spheres—because we Mapuche people consider ourselves to be an integral part of nature. This understanding urges us to establish and adopt development strategies that are sustainable, communal, and participatory (Chihuailaf, 2009, p. 66).
Itrofil Mogen refers to the living world, emphasising its unity: “it is equivalent, in contemporary scientific terms, to biodiversity. Considering the etymology of the expression, we can distinguish three parts: Itro, totality without exclusion; Fil, integrity without fracture; and Mogen, life, and the living world” (Chihuailaf, 2009, pp. 65–66).
Complementing Chihuailaf’s vision, Weke analyses the concept and translates it into Spanish, defining Itro as ‘composition of many lives that simultaneously share the same space’, which could be translated as multiversity. Fil means that they all have their own life but that they interact with each other and are interdependent, and could be translated as pluriversity. Therefore, there are millions of tiny lives maintaining all of life, which in sum is one great life. To exemplify, our physical bodies are made up of many lives (and Western science itself confirms this, we are true clusters of bacteria), each depending on the others, which allow us to feel, think, do, and maintain survival of the Being (Weke, 2017).
As Weke describes, Itrofil Mogen takes place in the mapun or mapu, a space composed of diverse living beings and energies: flora, animals, water, birds, as well as spiritual presences. It is a space “that has the conditions of life, sociability, and mutual collaboration between families; it is the socio-natural context” (Weke, 2017). This context relates to systems of conservation, organisation, nourishment, and communication.
As Chile enters a new political cycle, the effectiveness of Indigenous consultation as “a procedural device whose objective is to remedy (to a certain extent) a particular form of ‘epistemic injustice’ (Miranda Fricker), which occurs when certain subjects or groups are excluded from participating as potential knowers in practices of epistemic inquiry due to their belonging to one or more marginalised social identities” (Guerra & Sánchez Sandoval, 2021, p. 28), will serve as an indicator of how the State understands knowledge, territory, and life itself.
Although we are living in a time of increased global awareness regarding the socio-environmental disasters produced by colonial supremacy and extractivist ambitions, macro-political structures continue to marginalise forms of knowledge as relevant as Itrofil Mogen, insofar as land and water remain framed primarily as capital to be exploited. While this conflict reflects the specific political tensions of Chile, it also speaks to a broader colonial order that distances itself from ideas of respect, care, and responsibility toward territories.
Making a distinction between indigenous worldviews and settler conceptions of land, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes:
In the settler mind, land was property, real estate capital, or natural resources. But to our people, it was everything: identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our non-human kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us. Our lands were where our responsibility to the world was enacted, sacred ground. It belonged to itself; it was gift, not a commodity, so it could never be bought or sold (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 17).
Kimmerer’s reflection underscores the capitalist logic embedded in the modern project, in which land becomes property and a source of accumulation—far removed from the meaning conveyed by Itrofil Mogen, where human beings are not separate from territory but are constituted through it.
Remembering this epistemic principle, it is crucial today in Chile to safeguard the proper implementation of consultation mechanisms and to observe whether they remain merely formal procedures or become spaces in which relational worldviews genuinely intervene in decision-making processes. This will shape not only environmental policy, but also the possibility of respect for and recognition of non-Western epistemologies. In this sense, the defence of land and water in southern Chile is inseparable from the defence of epistemic diversity.
Josefina Camus’s research explores the intersections of art and ecology, with particular emphasis on ecosocial transformations, decoloniality, and the politics of gender. Her scholarship employs transdisciplinary frameworks and positions artistic practice as a mode of knowledge production. Camus has realized projects in installation, performance, choreography, sound art, and video, which have been exhibited internationally at institutions including Tate Modern, Sadler’s Wells, Matucana 100, and other venues across Europe and Latin America. In 2023, she published Pequeña Ecología. Comunidad, performance e instalación. SoHo, N.Y., 1970s (Metales Pesados). She currently teaches at Universidad Austral de Chile and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Camus holds academic degrees from institutions in London, Paris, and Santiago de Chile.
[1]Author’s translation from the original Spanish-language text: “Interpreta feminismo, ambientalismo, indigenismo y otros “ismos” como amenazas ideológicas de la izquierda, no como agendas legítimas de política pública”.
[2]“demandas feministas, ambientales o de reconocimiento identitario en amenazas civilizatorias, deslegitimándolas como si no formaran parte del debate democrático legítimo”.
[3]Author’s translation from the original Spanish-language text : “La consulta indígena previa procede ante un acto legislativo o administrativo que pueda generar un impacto significativo y específico sobre los pueblos indígenas o afectar el ejercicio de sus tradiciones y costumbres ancestrales, prácticas religiosas, culturales o espirituales, o la relación con sus tierras indígenas”
[4]Author’s translation from the original Spanish-language text : “doble función epistémica consiste en habilitar la participación colectiva de los pueblos indígenas como agentes de conocimientos propios y válidos, y operar como un mecanismo de visibilización de impactos para la protección de los derechos indígenas en contextos de diversidad cultural”.
Bibliography and references
Arenas, Patricio. 2026. “Kast en Bruselas: la ideología detrás del discurso del “sentido común” y la batalla cultural”. Le Monde Diplomatique (Chile), febrero 2026. Available at: https://www.lemondediplomatique.cl/kast-en-bruselas-la-ideologia-detras-del-discurso-del-sentido-comun-y-la.html
Chihuailaf, Elicura. 2009. Message to Chileans. Canada: Trafford Publishing.
Guerra, Felipe, and Sánchez Sandoval, Gonzalo. 2021. “La función epistémica del derecho de los pueblos indígenas a la consulta previa en Chile.” Revista de Derecho. https://doi.org/10.4067/S0718-00122021000300024
Kast en VII Cumbre Transatlántica en Bruselas. 4/02/2026. Video de YouTube, publicado por Televisión Nacional de Chile (TVN). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whduHnLI9n4
Poder Ambiental. s.f. “La consulta indígena en Chile: qué es y cuándo debe realizarse.” Available at: https://consultas.poderambiental.cl/article/138-la-consulta-indigena-en-chile-que-es-y-cuando-debe-realizarse
Wall Kimmerer, Robin. 2020. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants. Great Britain: Penguin Books (Random House Group).
Weke, Jorge. 2017. “Itrofill mogen: toda la vida sin excepción.” Revista Endémico, 23 November 2017. Available at: https://endemico.org/itrofill-mogen-toda-la-vida-sin-excepcion/
