Presentation short abstract

Ethnographic research on Indigenous women in Chiloé shows how they confront the commodification of the sea by sustaining and reinventing coastal life. Through hybrid economic, institutional, and community strategies, they defend marine territories and reimagine coastal futures.

Presentation long abstract

This article analyzes the reconfiguration of the relationships between indigenous women in the Chiloé Archipelago and their marine-coastal territories in the context of the expansion of the aquaculture and fishing industries. Using an ethnographic approach, it describes the historical specificity of this link and examines how the commodification of the sea has transformed their relationships with the coast, the sea, and the species that inhabit these ecosystems. The results demonstrate that coastal women sustain, reconfigure, and revitalize island ways of life through a range of strategies that respond to the socio-environmental impacts of industrial expansion: (i) economic and subsistence strategies that combine traditional knowledge with new activities under conditions of uncertainty; (ii) strategies of institutional appropriation and re-signification, particularly through mechanisms such as the Marine-Coastal Spaces of Indigenous Peoples (ECMPO), where women participate actively in governance, recognition, and territorial defense; and (iii) community practices for sustaining life, which reinforce local networks and intergenerational care. The findings show that these strategies coexist within a hybrid web of practices aimed at managing, defending, and inhabiting marine–coastal spaces in ways that resist the privatization of the commons and affirm the continuity of island ways of life that sustain the life of multiple species and their communities.