Kawésqar: Difference between revisions

| popplace = [[Chile]]: [[Puerto Edén]], [[Argentina]]

| population = 3,448 (2017)<ref name="Censo2017Chile">{{cite web|url=https://www.censo2017.cl/descargas/home/sintesis-de-resultados-censo2017.pdf|title=Síntesis de Resultados Censo 2017 |page = 16 |website = Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas, Santiago de Chile}} {{Dead link|date=November 2023}}</ref>

| related = [[YaghanYahgan people|YaghanYahgan]]{{factcitation needed|date=January 2020}}

[[File:Alacaluf_woman,_Villa_Puerto_Edén,_Chile_-_20060111.jpg|thumb|right|220px|An AlacalufA Kawésqar woman selling handicrafts to tourists in [[Villa Puerto Edén]], Chile.]]

The '''Kawésqar''', also known as the '''AlacalufeKaweskar''', '''KaweskarAlacaluf''', '''AlacalufAlacalufe''' or '''Halakwulup''', are an [[indigenous people of South America|indigenous people]] who live in [[Chilean Patagonia]], specifically in the [[Brunswick Peninsula]], and [[Wellington Island|Wellington]], [[Santa Inés Island|Santa Inés]], and [[Desolación]] islands northwest of the [[Strait of Magellan]] and south of the [[Gulf of Penas]]. Their traditional language is known as [[Kawésqar language|Kawésqar]]; it is [[Endangered language|endangered]] as few native speakers survive.

The English and other Europeans initially adopted the name that the [[YaghanYahgan people|YaghanYahgan]] (also known as Yámana), a competing indigenous tribe whom they met first in central and southern [[Tierra del Fuego]], used for these people: '''"Alacaluf'''" or '''"Halakwulup'''" (meaning "mussel eater" in the [[YaghanYahgan language]]).{{factcitation needed|date=January 2020}} Their own name for themselves (autonym) is Kawésqar.

Like the Yahgan in southern Chile and Argentina, the Kawésqar wereused to be a [[nomad]]ic seafaring people, called canoe-people by some anthropologists. They made canoes that were eight to nine meters long and one meter wide, which would hold a family and its dog.<ref name="messier">[http://www.indigenousgeography.si.edu/community.aspx?commID=5&lang=eng Patricia Messier Loncuante, "Kawésqar Community"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120807205054/http://www.indigenousgeography.si.edu/community.aspx?commID=5&lang=eng |date=2012-08-07 }}, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, accessed 12 October 2013</ref> They continued this fishing, nomadic practice until the twentieth century, when they were moved into settlements on land. Because of their maritime culture, the Kawésqar have never farmed the land.

The total population of the Kawésqar was estimated not to exceed 5,000. They ranged from the area between the [[Gulf of Penas]] (Golfo de Penas) to the north and the [[Brecknock Peninsula]] (Península de Brecknock) to the south.<ref name="messier"/> Like other indigenous peoples, they suffered high fatalities from endemic European [[infectious diseases]]. Their environment was disrupted as Europeans began to settle in the area in the late 1880s.{{citation needed|date=April 2023}} A 2022 estimate puts the total population of the Kawésqar before the 19th- and early 20th-century collapse at 3,700 to 3,900.<ref name=modelinpop>{{Cite journal |title=A modeling approach to estimate the historical population size of the Patagonian Kawésqar people |journal=[[The Holocene]] |last=Estay |first=Sergio A. |issue=6 |volume=32 |pages=578–583 |last2=López |first2=Daniela N. |last3=Silva |first3=Carmen P. |last4=Gayo |first4=Eugenia M. |last5=McRostie |first5=Virginia |last6=Lima |first6=Mauricio}}</ref> The [[Little Ice Age]], lasting from the 17th to the 19th centuries, may also have had a negative impact on the Kawésqar population.<ref name=modelinpop/>

In the 1930s many remaining AlacalufKawésqar were relocated to [[Wellington Island]], in the town of [[Villa Puerto Edén]], to shield them from pressures from the majority culture. Later they moved further south, to [[Puerto Natales]] and [[Punta Arenas]].

Adwipliin, Aksánas, Alacaluf, Cálen ([[Cálenches]], Calenes), [[Caucahué]], Enoo, [[Lecheyel]], [[Taíjataf]] (Tayataf), Yequinahuere (Yequinahue, [[Yekinauer]]).{{citation needed|date=February 2023}}

By 1884 [[Thomas Bridges (Anglican missionary)|Thomas Bridges]], an [[Anglican]] [[missionary]] based in [[Ushuaia]] who had been servingproselytising and studying the indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego since the late 1860s, and his son Despard compiled a 12001,200-word vocabulary for the [[Kawésqar language]]. It was in the form of a manuscript.<ref name="furlong">{{cite journal |last=Furlong |first=Charles Wellington |author-link=Charles W. Furlong |date=December 1915 |title=The Haush And Ona, Primitive Tribes Of Tierra Del Fuego |journal=Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Congress of Americanists |pages=446–447 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oe0SAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA432 |access-date=2009-08-16 }}</ref> Through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, numerous missionaries and anthropologists moved among the indigenous peoples to aidrecord, recordstudy and, studyin the case of the missionaries, proselytise them.

[[File:The earth and its inhabitants (1882) (14591030248).jpg|thumb|"Alakaluf fuegians[[Fuegians]], dressed in [[huanaco]] skins" (ca. {{circa|1882}}).]]

In 1881, European anthropologists took eleven Kawéskar people from [[Patagonia]] to be exhibited in the [[Bois de Boulogne]] in [[Paris]], and in the [[Berlin Zoological Garden]]. Only four survived to return to Chile. Early in 2010, the remains of five of the seven who died in Europe were repatriated from the [[University of Zurich]], Switzerland, where they had been held for studies. Upon the return of the remains, theChilean president of[[Michelle ChileBachelet]] formally apologized for the state having allowed these indigenous people to be taken out of the country to be exhibited and treated like animals.<ref name="130 años después regresan los kawésqar">[https://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/america_latina/2010/01/100114_1626_chile_indigenas_gtg.shtml "130 años después regresan los kawésqar"], BBC.co.uk, January 2010</ref>

== External links ==

[[Category:KawésqarSea nomads]]