Contribution short abstract:

In Chile, Mapuche Indigenous communities challenge the national classification of their cultural heritage as National Monuments, advocating for depatrimonialization. This tension reveals a conflict between nationalist policies and more-than-human politics guided by spirits and ancestors.

Contribution long abstract:

In Chile, the legal framework links the concept of national cultural heritage to the category of National Monuments. These are considered to belong to the Chilean people but are public property controlled by state bodies. In response to the call from spirits and ancestors, a collective of Mapuche Indigenous communities has begun advocating for the depatrimonialization of elements that compose the Mapuche world and that National legislation classifies as objects of ethnographic and archaeological origin.

This impetus challenges the categories that allow for the inscription of such things/beings as Chilean national heritage and questions the supposed common good that guides the nationalization of collections, places, and monuments. Faced with the nationalist claim that the common would override the specificity of specific cultural communities, uncommoning becomes a powerful tool to vary the certainties that one knows what one is dealing with regarding cultural heritage. The Mapuche communities' actions highlight fundamental differences in memory, care practices, and the relationship with the materiality of so-called “cultural goods,” calling into question a supposed multicultural national identity. The incompatibility between Chilean nationalist politics and the more-than-human politics of spirits, ancestors, and the land itself becomes apparent. The tension created by this encounter allows for the possibility for what the State designates as National Monuments—and thus national cultural heritage—to emerge as subjects seeking liberation from the policies and legislation that confine them as the heritage of a nation that they do not recognize and reject, asserting a different temporality.