Building schooling from insurgent education: Kom Pu Lof Ñi Kimeltuwe and the Mapuce bafkehce pedagogy

ABSTRACT

Western modernity has systematically made ancestral and indigenous knowledge invisible through their use of scientific logic, making school a space of hegemonic control through the western knowledge taught in the official curriculum. Despite that, in Chile advances in matters of constitutional recognition and cultural value are rare. Ten years ago, on the country’s southern coast, the first mapuce bafkehce school was erected with a curriculum designed to reflect and benefit its own territory. The Kom Pu Lof Ñi Kimeltuwe is an institution that, through mapuce bafkehce pedagogy and insurgent education, challenges and reframes kimeltuwun/kimkantun (teaching-learning) practices. This paper provides an account of the insurgent education which took place in Jaqepvjv lof¹ while also exploring the central elements that constitute the educational project present in this Lof, known as Kom Pu Lof Ñi Kimeltuwe, located in the Araucanía Region, Teodoro Smith commune, Chile.

KEYWORDS:

• Mapuce bafkehce
• mapuce pedagogy
• insurgent education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. According to Cubillos, Lof is understood as the first Mapuce social organisation and the basis of major structures. It is a territorial entity constituted by extensive family groups and where the authority is the Logko. The Lof, is a territorial space that embraces not only people that live in it but also the elements (animals, plants, spiritual beings, hills, estuary, etc.) that form it (82). Further reading, see Cubillos et al. (2011, 4), Curihuentro (2001, 32), Fernández et al. (2012, 85), Pinto Veas (2016, 32), Quidel Lincoleo (2016, 715), Williamson et al. (2012, 85).

2. Per Indigenous Law 19.253 of 1993 in Chile.

3. Established by Ecuador in its Constitution in the year 2008. Bolivia declares it in its Constitution in 2009.

4. Some essential references can be found in the work of Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui: Oprimidos pero no vencidos (1984) and Ch’ixinakax utxiwa : una reflexión sobre prácticas y discursos descolonizadores (2010), Catherine Walsh: PEDAGOGÍAS DECOLONIALES. Prácticas insurgentes de resistir, (re)existir y (re)vivir. Vol. 1. Pensamiento decolonial (2013) and Sandew Hira: El largo recorrido de decolonizar la mente en Latinoamérica (2016).

5. This narrative was constructed as part of the preliminarily results of the Institutional Improvement Project – UMCE: ‘Systematization of the emergent critical curriculum of the Kom Pu Lof Ñi Kimeltuwe school for the elaboration of an innovative didactic and evaluative proposal’.

6. The Wallmapu (mapuce territory) is formed of four territorial identities: The Pewence, linked to the territorial space of Pewen (Araucaria); Wentece, linked to the valley; Nagce, those who surround the Chilean Coastal range; and the Bafkhece that identify themselves with the sea. ‘We have to acknowledge that the orientation of the map is towards Puel Mapu, the place where the Antv (sun) rises for the mapuce. If that is compared with the western point of view, the Wallmapu is formed from the Bío Bío River (that divides the Bío Bio and Araucanía regions in Chile), and the inlet of Reloncaví, their northern and southern limits with Gvlvmapu (known by westerns as Chile). Their western and eastern delimitations are the coast of the Pacific Ocean to the coast of the Atlantic Ocean’ (Calfuqueo et al. 2018, 75).

7. The Intercultural Bilingual Education Programme (EIB) is promoted by the State of Chile through the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) as part of the policies of the Indigenous Law No. 19.523 of 1993, starting in 1996. The EIB programme is currently applied in areas with a high density of indigenous population.

8. Dr Rolando Pinto Contreras, part of the academic team, followed the school through their emergent curricular construction process and, in his article ‘Building emergent curriculum in Llaguepulli,’ described the process of systematically designing their own plans and programmes. Even though he worked in an area of knowledge related to Ixofu Mogen (Biodiversity), he states that the methodology used is identical for the construction of the remaining areas of knowledge (2016, 17-18).