PUERTO EDEN KAWESQAR COMUNITY PRESENTATION AT THE LATINO PARLIAMENT

PUERTO EDEN KAWESQAR COMUNITY

PRESENTATION AT THE LATINO PARLIAMENT

Punta Arenas, Chile, April 26th, 2012

"CHILE´S HISTORICAL DEBT WITH SOUTHERN CANOEISTS

COMUNTIES: CURRENT CONDITIONS "

We truly Thank PARLATINO for the opportunity to present the features and conditions of our race, one of the most endangered Species and one of the least known of these latitudes.

We reside in Puerto Eden, a small coastal village that is located at coordinates 49 ° 08 'S and 74 ° 25', on the Southern entrance to Messier Channel and immediately East of Wellington Island. Puerto Eden is the only population of Bernardo O'Higgins National Park, the largest protected wilderness area in the country and one of the largest on the planet, a biological reservoir of water resources are in this territories and still unexplored. East of Puerto Eden, the Southern Ice Field is located, yet unbounded place which constitutes an important global reserve of fresh water, not counting its strategic importance for the whole region.

Our Community in Puerto Eden is the latest sociological community of this ethnic group. The fourteen people who have fought for the preservation of our culture live here. We are one of the surviving populations of an extensive process of extermination of the five ethnic groups originate to Patagonia.

We live in a landscape. But living conditions are extremely difficult. Town communications are seriously flawed. Just a ferry serves the community, service which is interrupted many times by different maters. When this happens, our isolation lasts up to several weeks. We lack adequate basic services. Electric power is supplied by a turbine, which at greatest demand does not keep up with the needs of the locals. Drinking water, despite the high natural availability of it, is a service that also presents failures. There is no sanitation services nor wastewater treatment, which has led the Bay of Puerto Eden to have trouble with its pollution conditions.

Moreover, the precarious housing for the resident Kawesqar families were donated by a Belgian foundation at the early 1990s. Up today houses are  badly damaged. We have not been able to get a financial initiative to recover these houses - which is a culturally relevant issue - even though the Community has developed a massive amount of projects for this purpose.

"Professor Miguel Contreras Montesinos School " provides Primary Schooling Education, making big efforts on this due to local conditions and recognition of their students as descendants of original people. However, Secondary and Higher Education haves to be taken on the Continent and even beyond the regional limits. We recently signed a cooperation agreement with the Magallanes University, which we hope to implement effectively soon, to provide granting of scholarships for the Community as well as the development of scientific research activities in full compliance with the rights of the community over their environment and their culture.

We are, however, a living community. We develop hard-cultural initiatives and rescue our traditions, despite the threats from the environment and others who affect our language, traditions and territory.

I would like to refer to the Kawesqar Territory as a huge challenge to preservation and protection.

It is important to note to the audience that Kawesqar people territoriality needs to be understood from their culture. As a counterpart to the extermination of nomad hunters, which were brought to its total extinction towards the 1940s, there are still two sociological canoeists nomadic communities of indigenous people on the Channels and Magallanes fjords: Puerto Williams Yagan Community  and us, Puerto Eden Kawésqar Community.

The geographical dispersion, mobility and territorial geography used by our ethnic comunitiy, helped us to survive extermination of native Patagonian populations. However, missionary activity and sedentary practice to which we are subjected, meant that we were forced to abandon gradually our nomadism, being replaced on missions run by churches or religious cults of European origin. By the year 1920, the Missionary activity concluded, our population had dwindled to permanent or semi-permanent settlements, such as Jetarkte, on Wellington Island and Rinconada Bulnes, in the Brunswick Peninsula.

Sedentarization policies were intensified in the last fifty years, induced precisely by the creation of our town of Puerto Eden, between 1949 and 1969.

As you can easily understand, sedentarism and such a remote & poor village has been a progressive weakening for Kawesqar population. One of the consequences we noted is Kawesqar Diaspora, with an obvious Generational & Cultural Gap. In fact, this has as results, that the number of recognized and accepted members of the Kawesqar Community does not exceed 120 people and, in a high percentage, of a second or third generation.

We are clustered in urbanization centers, breaking ties with all our nomadic traditions. We also face huge impoverishment and difficulties to access to various social and health services.

INTRODUCTION TO KAWESQAR CULTURE:

I want to introduce you to some of the ideas on Kawesqar conception of territory as a Dual Entity dominated by the Marine Environment.

Kawesqar Culture is based on its relationship with the Marine environment and the coastal area. The sea is for our people a communication media and source of livelihood. It is also a scenario to our worldview. Therefore, the area included in the channels and Magallanes fjords (jáutok), as well as open to the Pacific coast (málte) are defined and conceptualized in our culture. In those places manifestations of our culture stand, in the form of opportunities for fishing and hunting, harvesting, lambing, temporary camping, cemeteries and Taboo places. The coastal area and the sea, its waters and resources, are constitutive of our territory.

This shows an important condition of our culture: our nomadism. Despite the establishment of our community in Puerto Eden, cultural references are kept alive and demand respect.

Thus, the Kawesqar territory, is a likely turnover of other ancient cultures, is dominated by the marine and coastal environment. The sea dominates the land. It is he who allows us to get there and have temporary or permanent settlements.

This is why the Kawesqar territory is vast at sea. Therefore covers, access to terrestrial territory associated with it. This territory goes from the Golfo de Penas to the Estrecho de Magallanes. Distinction must be made between Málte and Jáutok, each with a specific contribution to the Kawesqar cosmogony. In addition, the territorry's toponymie also is known by Kawesqar language names, often known in parallel to the official name.

The Kawesqar population recognizes four zones for settlements. In latitudinal terms, going from north (aqáte) to south (sete) you will meet the Sǽlam or inhabitants of the north, which corresponds to the people living from the Golfo de Penas to the Canal Adalberto. Then, Kčewíte, residents in the area of southern Sǽlam, and settling from the Canal Adalberto to the Jorge Mont Island and Strait Nelson, the Kelǽlkčes, in the zone of Cabo de Ultima Esperanza and Tawókser, located in the Seno de Skyring, Seno Otway and on both sides of the Estrecho de Magallanes.

Travel narratives that have been documented from oral, show that the territory has been covered since time immemorial for purposes of subsistence by our population, then barter hunting products with fur traders and also using the marine environment for shellfish harvesting and small scale fishing and trading at the consumption areas.

In these stories, departure points are very important and denoted as referrals, also as intermediate and target points, before returns, are defined  and that builds on the Kawesqar social construction. This circumstance generates  a nomadic consciousness that anchors in the community and links navigation with points where sea and land offers best conditions for hunting, gathering and fishing.

This is especially important, because it implies a conception of the area that records their ancestral uses and incorporates modern activities, to the extent that these do not imply a transgression of the first. The sea and terrestrial environment should provide a living, and is the environment in which the community is sustainable, since it is aimed at development.

We need to expose how we got to this endangered condition as victims of a profound process of genocide / ethnocide.

The Kawesqar conception of territory, both: land and sea, is binary, it was not deserted at the time of Western colonization. It was, moreover, as shown by archaeological research, a fully controlled territory used by our people. The extent of this territory was always associated with the practice of hunting, fishing and gathering, which required large tracts of nomadism that would sustain the population.

It is on that population over which an exerted and extensive physical and symbolic violence was executed. The Kawesqar extermination process and land occupation by European colonization and Chileans were accompanied by physical extermination of the indigenous population, under the assumption that we did not meet the standards allowed to be subjects of law in the same condition of the people who invaded our territory. This practice not only goes back to the Chilean independence, but it especially and virulently starts from the first decades of the Republican era. The scope of the genocide of our people is a dark chapter of the history of the Chilean state. It is not easy to take care of such practices as one of the grounds on which formed the legal authority of the Republic of Chile in the southern end of the continent, demolishing the rights of an ethnia that was settled for thousands of years in these latitudes.

The practice of kidnapping with dead results were even admitted legally covered by the new Republic, for the exhibition of our ancestors in Cultured Human Zoos in Europe. This is an issue that we have been recently recognized in its full scope.

Genocide joined a number of practices to impose the alien culture on our people. Chasing assurance of the land allocated to settlers by the State of Chile, led migration, and reduced our people in religious missions, which began the process of destroying our culture, our traditions and our references, along bringing sicknesses and death of those who were brought to these camps and foreshadowed the worst practices that would develop Western cultures, a process that was later reinforced by the imposition of conscription, or mandatory engagement of our ancestors as precarious labor in agricultural or mining of central and northern Mexico. Orphaned children were, moreover, removed from their communities, under a condition attributed orphans to be adopted by families outside our village, having been lost track of their final destination.

So we know about genocide and how it was protected by the Republic of Chile, known through the stories of our elders and the chronicles of historians and researchers. But it recognized the full extent of the consequences he has caused to the survival of our ethnicity. Today we are held hostage in Puerto Eden, which we consider the principal center of our territory. There we preserved our culture and with a huge effort the material basis of it.

The Laws of Nations protects our Rights and I would like to refer about that right now:

It is clear nowadays that International Laws recognize our Rights as Indigenous People and as a minority in the Chilean State. This recognition has a Constitutional Status, therefore, it cannot be ignored, either by law or by the regulatory activities of the Authorities, in any form. No one can attribute themselves greater rights than the granted by the Chilean constitution, or may ignore or repeal Rules that have the Status of Basic Human Rights.

International Rights protects the material and immaterial base of the Kawesqar culture. This implies that: if Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, on which C  Chile takes part in since 1989, recognizes minorities the right to exercise their culture, as recognized on numerous occasions by the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations. For the Committee, this protection of the identity of a native population means, the deployment of positive activities to protect it, removing obstacles for its exercise, so its not only language or religion, but in the use of resources, and specifically mentioned including fishing and hunting, and the right to live in reserves protected by law.

This implies that, for the Kawesqars, the right of access to marine resources and land is legally protected, and corresponds to the Chilean State and its authorities to respect it and promote it effectively.

And at this stage, I would like to remind you that when the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations made a public call to know of other cases like the Kawesqar, about this, they made three clear &basic statements on Rights of coastal people:

a) That sea ​​fishing is protected under Article 27 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights;

b) That there are laws that can interfere with the exercise of rights under this article;

c) That with a broad participation and informed process by the affected communities may authorize the establishment of regulations to rights under the same article, but without being able to get a waiver of those rights.

Moreover, the Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization reaffirms our rights as coastal village. Of particular importance is the concept of territory contained in Article 13. It combines three elements. First, it points out a mandate for governments, in the sense that they, in implementing the Convention, must respect the special importance that the lands and territories have for the cultures and spiritual values ​​of the peoples concerned. That is, it is a term that encompasses all the actions of those governments, in its various manifestations. Second, it highlights the difference and, at the same time complementing the dimensions of land and territory. Under the Convention, the territory covers the total environment of the areas which the peoples concerned occupy or otherwise. Thus, the protection afforded by this provision exceed the pure land and framework should be extended to all the media that is used by these people. This would include, among other considerations: territory, waters, oceans and their resources.

We understand also that the coastal towns have a special right of consultation envisaged in the existing International Law.

We have a special right of consultation in addition to the general right of consultation of Article 6 of the Convention. Thus, a double right belonging to the Kawesqar Community resident in Puerto Eden, developing their livelihoods in that blending of sea and land, and ancestral practices developed using the resources of one dimension of our territory .

A double right query that must meet the same minimum standards that the Committee of Experts of the ILO has established for the implementation of Article 6 of the Convention. That is, there must be prior consultation, informed and directed in good faith to obtain consent. It is not, therefore, a mere right of ratification, since the query should be allowed to influence the implementation of the measure and properly evaluate their social, spiritual and cultural, as well as on the environment and its protection . The Chilean Supreme Court has been ordered around the same assumptions. Particular cases of great concern are stage mentioned.

That is why we are concerned about the latest actions of the Chilean Government and directly affecting the rights of the Kawesqar Community resident in Puerto Eden.

On this issue, we can mention, the Coastal Zoning of the Magallanes Region and Chilean Antarctica, which was made without any consultation, no one was informed, and specifically no one directed  conversations in good faith to reach agreement with the community. That has meant that today part of the Kawesqar Territory have been declared as an area suitable for aquaculture, with the subconsecuent invasion of our cultural, tangible and intangible property and culture.

It is reported by the political authority of Chile, that there should be a General Consultation on the  different Communities of the Indigenous people. Yet this same attention says:

a) That they recognize that there has been no prior consultation

b) intends to conduct further consultation, which violates International Covenant rules Civil and Political Rights and the Convention 169, leading to zoning rules and declarations of suitability of aquaculture areas are in a condition that we will seek to enforce invalid.

We have argued about the true fallacies of justifying the lack of prior consultation of the participation in the management of coastal and marine resources. Forget, in fact, the Government of Chile cannot argue because as per law, it violates International Commitments.

The members of the Kawesqar Community of Puerto Eden are seriously concerned about ads in a massive facility centers for intensive aquaculture salmon farming in our territory. We already know the disastrous results in the region of Los Lagos, and the pernicious effects on the Huilliche communities of that region. An activity that exploits the environment to the full, ad nauseum soiled, degrades the social and cultural environment as environmental or health crises facing ends up turning the state itself to save them from bankruptcy. We do not want that for our territory.

We are also concerned to recover our rights and coastal fisheries. A reverse Diaspora of hope and populate that space is our territory. But sustainably. No rush for alienated industrialization.

Today we are willing to fight in all forums, national and international for our culture which is part of our world view, our culture and heritage. Both of enormous wealth, despite the appearance of sobriety they have. We want, as we have said elsewhere, to make visible that under the simple is often the greatest wealth, and on the edge of this country and planet our people survive a claiming for dignity and recognition.