Socioenvironmental Crisis and Childhood in Mapuche Land: Children’s Maps and Narratives in Rural Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 7:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Global Indigenous Futures: Collaboration, Climate, and Knowledge in Motion Across the Americas

Abstract

This study examines children’s perspectives on socioenvironmental conflicts in Mapuche territories of southern Chile. Using participatory mapping and walking interviews with community members, the research highlights how rural school children and local agents understand environmental degradation, cultural displacement, and extractive impacts. Set in Araucania Chile, findings reveal hybrid territorial imaginaries that integrate Indigenous and urban elements. Children emerge as epistemic and political actors, linking ecological damage to everyday experiences. Rural schools are shown as key sites for intercultural and ecological education, though threatened by closure. The study contributes to global debates on environmental justice and Indigenous education by centering children’s situated knowledge. It calls for policies supporting rural schools, intercultural pedagogies, and community-based responses to territorial and ecological challenges.

Authors

• María Isabel Reyes, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso

• Rukmini Becerra-Lubies, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile