‘It was already decided:’ Indigenous consultation policy and settler colonial violence in Chile

• In Event: Human Rights, Governance and Indigenous Peoples

Abstract

This paper offers a critical re-reading of the implementation of the duty to consult with Indigenous peoples in Chile, placing the practice of consultation in light of the settler colonial (Wolfe, 2006) history of the country. Since Chile ratified the International Labour Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention 169 in 2008, several developments have taken place. One of them concerns the state’s efforts to regulate consultation through the creation of two parallel consultation mechanisms – one for investment projects with environmental impacts and one for all other so-called general government measures. Adopting an institutional ethnographic approach (Smith, 2005), this analysis draws on extensive fieldwork research to show how the planning and negotiation of those regulations re-enacts historical trends in Indigenous policy, which have sought to forcefully assimilate, negate, and/or reduce the exercise of Indigenous rights. More than 40 in-depth interviews with state officials and Indigenous leaders who were involved in the process suggest that the contemporary practice of consultation further consolidates the state’s longstanding approach towards Indigenous peoples – what some scholars have termed ‘domination by imposition of Chilean law’ (Burgos et al., 2006). While there are numerous studies of Indigenous consultation in Chile, most of them adopt a legalistic approach that focuses on gaps in implementation or failure to meet international law standards (Ríos, 2011; Tomaselli, 2013; Sanhueza, 2013; Caniuqueo and Peralta, 2017). This paper adds to these debates by connecting consultation in the 21st century to historical practices that help perpetuate colonial rationalities and sensitivities (Porter, 2010) to this day.

Author

• Magdalena Ugarte, Ryerson University