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Indigenous communities battle companies for Chile’s rivers

By Associated Press

Aug. 20, 2022

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

Women take part in a purification ritual in the culmination of the multiday celebration of We Tripantu, the Mapuche New Year, on the banks of the Pilmaiquen River in Carimallin, southern Chile, on Sunday, June 26. The rite is a "symbolic way to renew energy," according to Millaray Huichalaf, a machi, or healer and spiritual guide.
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Millaray Huichalaf, a Mapuche machi, or healer and spiritual guide, bathes a woman suffering from pneumonia with native plants as part of a medicinal practice known as lawen at her home in Carimallin, southern Chile, on Sunday, June 26. Huichalaf became seriously ill as a child in the nearby city of Osorno until her family realized it was an ancestor's spirit wanting to come back in her as a healer.
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Mapuche community members walk to the Pilmaiquen River for a purification ritual in the culmination of the multiday celebration of We Tripantu, the Mapuche New Year, in Carimallin, southern Chile, on Sunday, June 26. The sacred holiday coincides with the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.
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Carrying a rack of beef, Mapuche leader Juan Antonio Huichalaf Malpu quarrels with police who have arrived to evict his family from a property the family claims as ancestral lands in Carimallin, southern Chile, on Sunday, June 26. In the end the family vacated the area.
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Millaray Huichalaf, center, a Mapuche machi, or healer and spiritual guide, beats on a ceremonial drum known as a kultrun, to accompany a game of palin, a traditional game similar to field hockey, in Carimallin, southern Chile, on Sunday, June 26.
6/18
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Nalca, a perennial plant native to southern Chile, decomposes along the banks of the Pilmaiquen River in Carimallin, southern Chile, on Sunday, June 26. The plant is collected by the Mapuche people for eating and medicinal use.
7/18
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Millaray Huichalaf, a Mapuche machi, or healer and spiritual guide, poses for a portrait in the Pilmaiquen River silhouetted by lights from the construction site of a hydroelectric plant in Carimallin, southern Chile, on Monday, June 27. Huichalaf has led a sometimes-violent battle against hydroelectric plants on the Pilmaiquen, which flows through rolling pastures from a lake in the Andean foothills.
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An aerial view shows the the Pilmaiquen River flanked on both banks by a hydroelectric plant construction site owned by the Norwegian company Statkraft in southern Chile, on Monday, June 27. Many Mapuche communities near the the Pilmaiquen, the Truful Truful River and elsewhere in the country's water-rich south are fighting against hydroelectric plants that they see as desecrating nature and depriving Indigenous communities of essential energies that keep them from getting sick.
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Jaime Uribe Montiel chops firewood as his niece Likarayen Mariantu and a family friend keep him company on ancestral land handed down to Uribe's wife, Millaray Huichalaf, in Carimallin, southern Chile, on Tuesday, June 28. The Huichalafs have been leading a battle against energy companies and others in a decadelong effort to reclaim their ancestral lands.
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Likarayen Mariantu, the 9-year-old niece of Millaray Huichalaf, a Mapuche machi, or spiritual guide and healer, catches raindrops as a family friend helps prepare dinner at Huichalaf's home in Carimallin, southern Chile, on Tuesday, June 28.
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Maria Omen hauls wood she gathered for cooking and heating near the Pilmaiquen River in Carimallin, southern Chile, on Wednesday, June 29.
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A huaso, or skilled horseman, trains a horse for an upcoming rodeo near the Pilmaiquen River in Carimallin, southern Chile, on Wednesday, June 29.
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Ruben Onate takes pictures sitting next to the largest waterfall of the Truful Truful River, near Melipeuco, southern Chile, on Thursday, June 30. Mapuche people believe in the falling water's distinctive "energy power" for healing purposes, either in riverside ceremonies or by taking large soda bottles full of it back home.
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Mapuche leader and mediator Andres Antivil Alvarez, who works to ensure non-Natives understand how nature matters to his people, greets his horse Chayane in Rengalil, southern Chile, on Saturday, July 9. "The world is not loot. Everything that's outside is also inside ourselves," Alvarez says.
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Mapuche leader Victor Curin, a Conguillio National Park ranger, poses for a portrait near a waterfall at the headwaters of the Truful Truful River in the Andes of southern Chile on Monday, July 11. "Human beings feel superior to the space where they go, but for us Mapuche, I belong to the earth, the earth doesn't belong to me," he says.
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Snow blankets the ground at the headwaters of the Truful Truful River in Conguillio National Park, southern Chile, on Monday, July 11. Despite this winter's abundant rain and snowfall, Chile is facing a worrisome climate change-driven drought that has compounded tensions over water use.
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The Truful Truful River winds through Conguillio National Park near Melipeuco, southern Chile, on Monday, July 11. For the Mapuche, Chile's largest Indigenous group and more than 10 percent of its population, a pristine river like the Truful Truful, flowing from a lava field under an Andean volcano, is the home of a spiritual force to revere, not a natural resource to exploit.
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Millaray Huichalaf, a Mapuche machi, or healer and spiritual guide, rides in a boat on the Pilmaiquen River in Los Rios, southern Chile, on Tuesday, July 12. During years of training to become a machi, she started having dreams about Kintuantü, a ngen, or protector spirit, living by a broad bend of the Pilmaiquen. "Through dreams and visions in trance, Kintuantü told me that I had to speak for him because he was dying," Huichalaf says.

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