Kawésqar Community

María Isabel Tonko Paterito and her daughter, María José, gathering jonquil (c'ápas). Photo by Marisol Villanueva

The Kawésqar are calm and reserved people, and they live in the environment that surrounds them. Originally, the Kawésqar were a nomadic sea-faring people, who moved from place to place, without staying in any one place permanently. Their principal characteristic was their ability to navigate by canoes, measuring approximately eight or nine meters long and one meter wide. Each canoe held an entire family and its dog. The Kawésqar would travel in the Patagonian channels of southern Chile in the area between the Gulf of Penas (Golfo de Penas) to the north and the Brecknock Peninsula (Península de Brecknock) to the south.

Since the mid-twentieth century, the Kawésqar have settled on land, first in Puerto Edén in southern Patagonia and then also further south in Puerto Natales and Punta Arenas. Today, very few Kawésqar remain. As a result, the younger generations maintain little information about their culture, and thus lack the power to preserve it. There are some women who are working to recover their cultural identity and, in doing so, are educating the Kawésqar people and the entire Magellan community of southern Chile.

— your host, Patricia Messier Loncuante
June 2005

(Translated from the original Spanish.)