CANCELED: Decolonize: The Mapuche Struggle for Land and Language

→Update: This event has been postponed until October 2020. We will share more information at a later date. 

The Interdisciplinary Committee on Linguistics (ICOL) at ASU presents documentary filmmaker and ASU PhD student Kelly Bauer with a screening of two award-winning documentaries about the indigenous Mapuche struggle in southern Chile.

The first documentary, "Weichanmu: We Are Going to War," was filmed in 2013–2014. It follows a Mapuche community in the process of reclaiming their ancestral land in Huentelolen. In the midst of being evicted from the property by the forestry company Arauco and the police, the Mapuche question the advance of the forestry industry in their territory, the legitimacy of the state and the capitalist system whose advance is a direct threat to the survival of Mapuche culture, thought and way of life.

The second documentary, "Zuguleaiñ: We Will Speak," was filmed in 2015, when a group of Mapuche university students organized the first-ever Mapuche language revitalization camp. Over 50 students from across Chile came together for one month to learn and preserve the Mapuche language. This documentary follows the stories of four participants over the course of three years in their process of decolonization by way of learning their maternal language and examining the hegemonic forces that are responsible for its disappearance.

Kelly Baur has spent time living and working in Chile since 2009, documenting the Mapuche struggle, the student uprising and the feminist movement. She is currently pursuing a PhD in linguistics and applied linguistics at ASU. Her friend, Carolina Kürrüf, will be joining the conversation from Chile via Skype. She is a professor of Physical Education at the University of Santiago, specializing in ancestral Mapuche games and sports.