Rethinking Recognition through Environmental Conflicts. The Rights of Indigenous People and Ecosystems: the case of the Mapuche and the Wallmapu in Chile.

The conflict that perpetues between the Chilean State and the Mapuche indigenous people is a symptom of a crisis in the policies developed in relation to Indigenous people. This crisis is largely due to a lack of an adequate theoretical framework to address the conflict. Indeed, the State has concentrated on an economic reading of the conflict by relying on redistribution mechanisms, without realizing that social conflicts can also be understood from an experience of grievance that seeks reducing moral inequality. In this sense, our hypothesis is that the demand of the Mapuche for the recognition of the cultural value of its identity is embedded with its natural context and ecosystems. This claim is grounded in the fact Mapuche culture finds its symbolic efficacy in an environment that requires protection to ensure the reproduction of this society as well as its identity. However, a review of the legal system shows that this symbolic value of the environment for the indigenous people is not adequately understood by land planning tools, which explains to a large extent why conflicts arise from the unsustainable and non planned use and exploitation of natural resources. Our objectives are: Diagnose the forms of moral suffering that indigenous people can experiment with the State negation of their identity, validate methodologically an ethnographic and decolonial historical approach to the so called conflict with the Mapuche, which allows giving a relevant symbolic dimension to the surrounding nature that is fundamental for the reproduction of the social identity of the Mapuche people.

This investigation in Chile can benefit largely from the partnership and expertise of Switzerland as well as from Swiss PI in local governance and sustainable development that helps to reduce moral inequality within a country. The Swiss team is highly qualified on the issues of recognition, discrimination, objective inequalities, and develops a theoretical approach, which gives a theoretical primacy to environmental conflicts at the global level. The project fits with goal 10 of the call «Sustainable Development– Reduced inequalities» of the Research Partnership Grants 2021.