PSCI313 - People of the Land: Indigeneity and Politics in Argentina and Chile

This undergraduate seminar compares the evolution of relations between settler colonial nation-states and indigenous peoples and movements throughout the Americas, with a particular focus on the Mapuche people of the Patagonia region, in the south of nowadays Argentina and Chile. The main goal of the course is to comparatively study the organization of indigenous communities and analyze their political demands regarding plurinationality, self-determination, territory, prior consultation, living well, and intercultural education and health care, as well as the different ways in which settler colonial nation-states accommodate or respond to such demands. The course is organized in three parts. The first part of the course studies indigenous rights in international law and in global affairs, particularly in the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the International Labor Organization. The second part of the course studies indigenous organization, movements, parties, and political representation, in Latin America since the 1990s, when indigenous demands acquired national and international notoriety throughout Latin America. The third part of the course zooms in a comparative analysis of the relationship between the Mapuche (Mapu: land; -che: people) and the formation and evolution of the settler colonial nation-states in Argentina and Chile. Once international travel resumes, the course will have an eight-day travel component. Students will travel to the south of Argentina to visit indigenous Mapuche communities to experience and learn first-hand about their culture, intercultural education and health, recuperation of identity and language practices, different models of economic sustainability, and of territorial claims and arrangements - including co-management between indigenous communities and the National Parks system.