Identity Positionings from Mapuche Huilliches Students: Constructing Devices and Discursivities in the Higher Education Space in Chile

• In Event: 64.022 - Education and Interculturality Across the Americas: Achievements and Challenges in an Ongoing Conversation

Abstract

Discursive practices, actions and materialities are addressed here, which, in their interaction as devices of interculturality, account for the identity positioning of Mapuche huilliches indigenous students in technical and professional studies in two intercultural careers at the University of Los Lagos.

This communication is based on a writing exercise made at the University of Los Lagos: an activity of orality and writing in which the students answered and commented on three general questions oriented around the self-knowledge of their identity processes, the sense of their entrance to the university and the perceptions and expectations regarding their formation as technicians in intercultural education.

The results of the work show that there is no single way to build indigenous identity. In this huilliche context there is a high appreciation of the features of the indigenous language, culture and worldview. These elements constitute the legacy and the socio-historical foundation of their Mapuche being. Students’ speeches reflect positions or ways of settling in higher education that is important to reveal: they ask to be treated as Mapuche and they are there to claim this educational space that as a people are owed: an investment of educational policies.

Author

• Amilcar Forno, Red Interuniversitaria de Educación e Interculturalidad, RIEDI