Intercultural Education Project: "Kuifi kimun Wiñoy Welukom" (Ancient Knowledge Returns). Mapuche Tehuelche Community, Vuelta del Río (Chubut-Argentina)

Abstract

This presentation aims at narrating the trajectory covered by the intercultural education project: "Kuifi kimun Wiñoy Welukom" (Ancient Knowledge Returns), from the Mapuche Tehuelche community "Vuelta del Rio" (Cushamen, Chubut, Argentina), in order to obtain official recognition. It gives account of the challenges of agencies and state agents (provincial and national ones) when interpellated by the Community to obtain answers to their demand for the right to an intercultural education based on community parameters.
Firstly, historical contexts are presented in order to interpret the educational policies implemented to incorporate the indigenous people from Patagonia to the state-nation-territory matrix. Secondly, the work presents the social and communitarian relevance defined by the families of the Community, and, at the same time, some collective reflections on the interculturality they project. Thirdly, there is an analysis of the trajectory of the project, imposed by the state, along with the different hierarchies and exclusions that the political power has implemented. Finally, some general guidelines of the current implementation of the provincial Intercultural and Bilingual Education (EIB, its Spanish acronym) are analyzed, which, as an inclusion policy, generate exclusion and certain diversity production where the persistence of power relations towards Indigenous People can be glimpsed.