Paper short abstract:

Pewenche people have had bad experiences with anthropologists. How do we conduct a non-extractive and collaborative research? To address this issue, I will share the experiences of conducting research with Pewenche people from Alto BioBío in Chile

Paper long abstract:

“Aquí los antropologos lo hicieron muy mal!” “Here the anthropologists did very badly!”. I received this comment from a Pewenche person when I said I was an anthropologist. Local people of Alto BioBío, where I’m conducting research since 2019, had very bad experiences with anthropologists. Researchers are seen as people who come and go, ask intimate questions and then disappear forever and sell the data to companies or institutions which eventually affect them. This shows how anthropological knowledge is still much linked to the colonial and capitalistic system and serve their purposes. As an anthropologists, I felt an ethical responsibility to develop a research and a praxis that was respectful and deeply served people. But no one told me how to do that. I started to think about: how do we conduct an anthropological research that is developed with the social group and is not about them? What are fair and non-extractive anthropological praxis? After a few years, many attempts and failures, together with local people and organizations I’m conducting a collaborative designed research that answer their questions and will hopefully serve their needs, using a collaborative, participative and non-invasive methodology. In this presentation, I will share our experience.