With regard to the National Day of Rural Education, commemorated on April 7, we present you with one of the projects supported by the Innovative Fund 2017 Colunga, which seeks to increase the level of knowledge of the Mapuche culture. To achieve this, they are inserted in the educational process of boys and girls of basic education in the Araucanía Region.

Photo: Mapuche Corporation Newen

The project "Itinerant School of the Mapuche Kimun Interterritorial " of the Mapuche Newen Corporation promotes the appreciation of the Mapuche culture in its family, community and territory spaces. This is done through workshops for children -mapuche and non-Mapuche- from first to sixth grade, in four schools in the Nueva Imperial district.

"We work with practical workshops. For example, children know how Mapuche wool is produced, how it is washed, scarved, knotted and dyed with natural products. Then they learn the loom, the tailoring, which is made with the same products of the territorial space ", highlights Gabriela Quilaqueo, Executive Director of the Mapuche Newen Corporation.

The project responds to a diagnosis that the school processes present in the territories do not use their own learning spaces, nor their own educational agents.

They work with an interdisciplinary team: teacher, human rights monitor and one or a connoisseur of the Mapuche language and knowledge. They teach children from learning by doing and listening attentively to children's voices. They also support families so that they know what their children are doing and can strengthen them at home. The development of the spirituality of the members of the families, reinforce it through various ceremonies konkünu (initial ceremony), llellipun (rogativa to extract natural resources), and wechunentu (ceremony of completion of work).

Photo: Mapuche Corporation Newen

"We want them to meet the Mapuche life, because there will be balance with the person. In schooling there is nothing of that knowledge. They have a language, a spirituality and special territorial space that everyone should learn, "says the Executive Director.

The consolidation of a model

For 10 years, Mapuche Newen has been working on projects in rural schools in La Araucanía, but it was thanks to the Colunga 2017 Innovative Fund that they managed to translate their model into a Mapuche education guide document for the 21st century.

Four pillars support this education: Mapuche vision, territory, Mapuche pedagogy and educational agents. "We wanted to have a system that can serve everyone, but from the mapuche kimün (Mapuche knowledge), "emphasizes Gabriela Quilaqueo, who does not ignore the importance of family support:" We hope that the family will be able to meet their Mapuche life every day, so that they can transmit this knowledge to the children and have coherence in them. . Then, when they go to school, to the city, to the lyceum, to the university, they keep that coherence and are sure of their identity. "

Photo: Mapuche Corporation Newen