Indigenous Tribe in Chile is on its Last Legs

Since the introduction of disease by European settlers centuries ago, indigenous peoples in the Western world have begun facing extinction. Now, in southern Chile's Patagonia region, there are only an estimated 12-20 pure-blooded members of the nomadic Kawesqar tribe.

Francisco Arroyo, estimated to be around 66 years old by a state census, is one of the last survivors of the tribe. He remembers being a boy and wending the icy channels and fjords with his father, tending a fire lit on dried earth on the bottom of their canoe and diving naked for giant mussels to survive.

Now, Arroyo hawks sea lion skin souvenir canoes and other trinkets, earning about $10. He says "It ends with our generation. We are old now. We can't go out in the channels any more. I am not sad. Life is easier now.” The region where he lives sees very few tourists, as it is accessible only by boat or helicopter.

The youngest full-blooded tribe members are two brothers aged around 40.

Arroya lives a very different life from his ancestors’, who lived in their canoes, even sleeping and cooking in them, wearing nothing other than a piece of sea lion skin on their backs and smothering themselves in grease and fat when diving for food.

Eugenio Aspillaga, a bio-anthropologist at the University of Chile, seeks to preserve the culture and language of the Kawseqars, explains the decline of the tribe, and others like them. He says, “They are in decline because the historic causes (illnesses) have continued until relatively recently." "Another factor is restrictions on their movement," he added, referring to a program in the 1960s to settle survivors in Puerto Eden. "There is a lesson in survival and human adaptability that we are losing. It is a part of humanity we neither know nor understand. Their culture is becoming extinct, and their language is also in danger," said Aguilera, who has studied the tribe since 1975. "Once the few survivors in Puerto Eden disappear, the oldest ones, then the culture will be lost and the tongue will no longer be spoken," he added.

Many of the tribe have married outside and there are an estimated 200 people of Kawesqar descent living elsewhere in Chile.

To read more about the extinction of Chile’s indigenous peoples, read the original article here.


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