Dr Rolf Foerster, University of Chile
2005 award - pilot project
£9,621 for 9 months.
After 300 years of resistance to the Spanish imperial army, the Mapuche people of Araucania and the Pampas were progressively colonised by the young state-nations of Chile and Argentina. This carried the social and cultural consequences of a colonial domination: loss of the Mapudungun language, impoverishment, discrimination, lands usurpations etc. A Mapuche political movement was formed to defend their rights, lands and culture as a racial and ethnic minority. The Mapuche had a tradition of literacy that was continued throughout this period.
Enlarged
Image [25 KB]
The surviving Mapuche texts are fragmented in more than 25 archives, libraries, private or public collections or as single volumes of manuscripts kept by different members of the author’s family.
Enlarged
Image [39 KB]
This pilot project aims to identify material available for a major project to form a Mapuche Special Collection, containing historical, political and ethnographical documents, written by Mapuche people in Spanish and Mapudungun between 1800 and 1950.
