Geoforum 127 (2021) 269–282

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Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Mapping hydropower conflicts: A legal geography of dispossession in

Mapuche-Williche Territory, Chile
Sarah H. Kelly *
Department of Anthropology, Silsby Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, United States
Centro de Investigación para la Gestión Integrada del Riesgo de Desastres, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Santiago de Chile, Chile

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: In this article, I examine how hydropower projects in Mapuche territory both form part of internationally
Legal geography recognized approaches to develop renewable energy and also anchor colonial relations in rivers. In pursuit of
Dispossession energy development, water and ancestral cultural practices of the Mapuche Pueblo are being seized by a nexus of
Energy transition
state laws and informal practices of private sector actors. Concurrently, Mapuche people assert their jurisdictions
Hydropower
Water
and experience resurgence of Indigenous lifeways through defending their waterways. Drawing on collaborative
Indigenous rights research guided by the Alianza Territorial Puelwillimapu, a Mapuche-Williche alliance convoked by ancestral
leaders, I provide a methodological contribution to legal geography’s analysis of Indigenous rights. Bringing a
legal geography approach to dispossession, I explain how collaborative mapmaking and systematizing the “layers
of dispossession” provides a methodological approach to consider structural limitations to environmental justice
on Indigenous lands. Overall, this case contributes to how we conceive of spatial justice in legal geography and in
renewable energy development.

1. Ethnographic vignette Puelwillimapu territory:

“Today it is our responsibility, as the elders of our community, to

The glaring morning summer sun shone down brightly on the two
defend our area until the ultimate moment. Defend our water. Here
Ministry of Energy officials, a tall wiry man of Spanish-Chilean heritage,
we were left an inheritance, from our grandparents, to do Nguillatun2
and a shorter athletic woman with Mapuche descendancy, who had
below the port at the edge of the lake. When we do Nguillatun we use
traveled to the Puelwillimapu territory of southern Chile from the cap­
the water from Lago Maihue. This water contains water from all the
ital Santiago. Officially, they came to meet with ancestral leaders and
rivers that flow from the Caulle. Our community, our territory
Mapuche-Williche communities about proposed hydropower energy
Puelwillimapu, runs from Osorno Volcano to Choshuenco Volcano,
projects in their territory. With the rounded Andean mountains behind
let it be known. Many of the youth do not know this. Puelwillimapu
them, the officials not only faced the sun, they faced over 100 Mapuche-
territory is big because all of the waters that fall in Lago Maihue
Williche people from throughout the Puelwillimapu territory, specif­
come from the Caulle and Choshuenco, those two volcanoes take the
ically the Maihue-Ranco watershed in the Ríos region of southern Chile.
water to Lake Ranco, that is why we defend Lake Ranco because we
A fire burned between two large Coihue tree stumps behind the half
do not want to give polluted water, dirty water, because we are
circle of Mapuche people, with five ancestral leaders standing closest to
people. We all drink this water, and we want to be healthy.”3
the officials. In his greeting, Lonko (spiritual-political leader) José
Panguilef of Lof Rupumeica1 explained the ancestral delineation of the Following introductions, a member of the Alianza Territorial

* Address: Department of Anthropology, Silsby Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, United States
E-mail address: Sarah.h.kelly@dartmouth.edu.
1
Lof is a basic socio-cultural and territorial unit of traditional Mapuche organization (Melin Pehuen et al., 2016).
2
All italicized words in Mapudungun, the language of Mapuche people, are defined in footnotes. Nguillatun, sometimes referred to or alternated with Lepu¨n, is one
of the most important and oldest ceremonies in Mapuche cosmovision; it is a ceremony organized territorially where certain Newen (vital forces) of the Mapuche
spiritual world are thanked, and their support is requested (Moulian, 2009; Melin Pehuen et al., 2016.
3
All quotes are translated by author from Spanish unless otherwise noted. Mapuche words (in their language, Mapudungun) are italicized and defined in text (if
common word) or by footnote (if the definition needs a supporting citation).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.11.011
Received 8 March 2021; Received in revised form 2 November 2021; Accepted 8 November 2021
Available online 17 November 2021
0016-7185/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S.H. Kelly
Puelwillimapu (Puelwillimapu Territorial Alliance, hereafter Alianza)
and an Nguillatufe4 stood by a map created during our collaboration
(Map 1). She explained the spiritual and physical geography of the
Puelwillimapu territory, stressing how important water is to their cul­
ture. The meeting quickly grew tense when leaders from the Alianza
asked if the Ministry of Energy could halt the development of hydro­
power projects while they investigated the irregularities of hydropower
project development in their territory. Although the two employees
admitted that significant problems existed, they stated that they did not
hold the authority to pause the projects. Soon after, the Ministry of
Energy officials were asked to leave, since they did not come with the
authority to engage in dialogue that Mapuche leaders requested.
2. Introduction
Chile’s transition to a low-carbon economy has received interna­
tional attention for substantially increasing a renewable energy portfolio
through private sector development (Londoño, 2017; Morales, 2019).
Map 1. The Map of Hope. (Map 1 was created by the community of Rupu­
meica, a collaborating graphic designer, and myself, a geographer. This map
represents two Ngen, spirit guardians (Grebe, 1993), who are of importance in
the Puelwillimapu territory and petitioned in ceremony. The map depicts a
hydro-social cycle (c.f. Linton and Budds, 2014), however it focuses on the
spiritual relationships of the cycle – how the water cycle connects across realms
– similar to the work of Boelens (2015). The map is not to scale but it artistically
represents the main rivers and lakes in the Puelwillmapu territory in Mapuche
geography, East-West from the Andean Mountains to the sea. Following pro­
tocol, it was decided in Trawun (ancestral meeting) to print the map in the
author’s publication.)
4 6
Ceremonial leader and ancestral authority.
270
Geoforum 127 (2021) 269–282
While solar and wind energy contribute the majority of operating gen­
erators, hydropower continues to be developed as part of this strategy.5
As an infrastructural process, hydropower is part of multiple worlds
where different ontologies of water and energy interact and conflict
(Hernando-Arrese and Tironi, 2019). Globally, hydropower has played a
key role in enclosing local populations (Kaika, 2006) and inflicting
unpredicted harms on diverse populations, often without delivering on
expectations (Gutierrez et al., 2019; World Commission on Dams, 2000).
Bringing a legal geography approach to dispossession, in this paper I
explain how hydropower development seizes water and ancestral cul­
tural practices of the MapuchePueblo through a nexus of neoliberal laws
for water, electricity, environment, and Indigenous rights and informal
practices of private sector actors. I also narrate how, simultaneously,
Mapuche-Williche people assert their jurisdiction and experience a
resurgence of Indigenous lifeways through defending their waterways,
which is an expression of embodied self-determination (c.f. Daigle,
2015, 2018).
I argue that hydropower forms part of a more-than-human legal
geography of dispossession in Mapuche territory. Internationally,
scholars find that water laws, institutions, and infrastructures can
operate as modes of colonization, connecting to other forms of dispos­
session over time and space (Bakker, 2003; Braverman et al., 2014;
Curley, 2019). Dispossessions are their own socio-legal processes that
remake more-than-human landscapes amidst colonization and confu­
sion. Indeed, recent scholarship suggests that the social in legal systems
involves more-than-human actors and relationships (Braverman, 2021;
Cantor et al., 2020). Furthermore, dispossession geographies are also
legally plural in that they involve intersecting legal systems6 (state law
imposed over Indigenous self-right) and different ways of knowing
water and land (Cardoso and Pacheco-Pizarro, 2021). Conceiving of
state law via “layers of dispossession” facilitates a spatial understanding
of the nexus of laws that limit Indigenous rights. Here, part of that
plurality of state and Indigenous law, Azmapu, is the self-right of Ma­
puche people that orders life, cultural practices, and mogen (all that is
life); it is linked to Chilean law through a history of colonization, but it is
also a collective projection beyond knowing (rumel mogelerpuael) (Melin
Pehuen et al., 2016). Below, I suggest that mapmaking in a collaborative
approach guided by Indigenous protocol – in this case by the Alianza–
can help to visualize spatial patterns of dispossession and support
self-determination.
Legal geography has long addressed how law and space create in­
justices (Delaney, 2016). Currently, scholars agree that legal geography
needs to build a more coherent field and deepen understanding of spatial
justice (Bennett and Layard, 2015; Braverman et al., 2014; Delaney,
2016). As “spatial detectives”, legal geographers trace how law-society
relationships are connected over time and space (Bennett and Layard,
2015). An emerging call in the field is to bridge Indigenous rights and
legal geography by evaluating how settler colonial geographies express
different forms of injustice, and how Indigenous rights are claimed in
relation to property rights (Correia, 2018a, 2021; Egan and Place, 2013:
Robertson, 2015). This approach can also respond to methodological
questions about understanding more-than-human legal geographies
(Braverman et al., 2014). Overall, this paper seeks to methodologically
contribute to how legal geography contends with dispossession as a
crucial mechanism for injustice in Indigenous lands.
This paper proceeds as follows. Below I position the legal geography
of dispossession within the field of legal geography and related sub-
fields. Then I contextualize the legal matrix influencing Indigenous
5
As of June 2021, Chile’s National Energy Commission reports that 7308
megawatts (MW) of nonconventional renewable energy are in operation: 3763
MW of PV solar, 2492 MW of wind, 597 MW of mini hydropower, and 416 MW
of biomass, and 40 MW of Geothermal. Mini hydro in Chile is defined as
generating 20 MW or less.
See De Sousa Santos (1987).
S.H. Kelly
rights claims in hydropower conflicts. Next, I explain how I methodo­
logically approached mapmaking, ethnography, and legal research
guided by Indigenous protocol. Following that, I empirically detail the
converging forms of dispossession involved in hydropower projects. I
spatially and temporally connect these layers to narrate the plural,
more-than-human manifestations of dispossession and Indigenous
resurgence. In the discussion, I reflect on the performance of the law in
acts of dispossession. In the conclusion I consider implications for
Indigenous rights claims and legal geography.
3. Legal geographies of dispossession in indigenous lands
Legal geography as a field progressed from a call to study the in­
teractions between law and space (Blomley, 1994) to viewing the two as
co-constitutive (Blomley et al., 2001; Braverman et al., 2014; Kedar,
2003). Legal geography contributes geographic ways to analyze how
law is not uniform in space as expected (Blomley, 2003). Writing law is
understood to be a practice that assumes particular social-spatial on­
tologies, either generating new legal geographies or reinforcing existing
ones (Benson, 2012; Correia, 2021; Delaney, 2010). Today, a broad set
of works and topics falls under legal geography’s umbrella, however the
number of self-identifying legal geographers is less and the field itself is
closer to an “archipelago” of works (Delaney, 2010) than a coherent
body of scholarship (Blomley, 2008; Orzeck and Hae, 2020). In this work
I follow a new emphasis on post-disciplinary legal geography (Blomley,
2013; Braverman et al. 2014; Delaney, 2010) that emphasizes the
performative dimension of how law makes the world. I also respond to
the call for studies of legal geography and Indigenous rights to examine
dispossession (Correia, 2018a; Kelly et al., 2021; Robertson, 2015) and
environmental justice (Correia, 2021; Braverman, 2021) in settler
colonial contexts.
To do so, I bring together critical legal geography’s emphasis on
spatial justice with insights on lawmaking and dispossession in Indige­
nous studies. A strength of legal geography is its close attention to
injustice performed in law and society (Braverman et al., 2014; Bennett
and Layard, 2015; Delaney, 2016). This builds on a vein of critical legal
geography that inspects how the law creates and legitimizes spatial
differences (Blomley and Bakan, 1992 Forest, 2000; Forman and Kedar,
2004; Kedar, 2003). Kedar (2003) documents how legal rules and pro­
cesses often enable dispossession of Indigenous populations, although
the technical language is framed otherwise. Forman and Kedar (2004)
trace land dispossession over time by connecting laws and spatial
ordering in an Israeli legal architecture. In relation to the dispossession
of streams, Braverman (2020) examines how Israel interprets a legal tool
of conservation to colonially dispossess water in Palestine, which also
stimulates settlers to practice cultural forms of dispossession.
A growing body of work across Indigenous Studies, Anthropology,
and Geography examines relationships between Indigenous geographies
and state law to identify barriers to Indigenous rights recognition
(Bryan, 2011; de la Cadena, 2015; Correia, 2018a; 2018b; Cardoso and
Pacheco-Pizarro, 2021; Curley, 2019; Daigle, 2018; Pasternak, 2017;
Robertson, 2015; Todd, 2016). In relation to dispossession, Indigenous
geographers forefront their own cartographies and practices of spatial
knowledge (de Leeuw and Hunt, 2018). Critically, Indigenous scholars
assert the importance of Indigenous knowledge being situated within
their legal frameworks (Daigle, 2016; Hunt, 2014; Todd, 2014). Another
important vein of work critiques the terms of state politics for recog­
nizing Indigenous people and their lands (Coulthard, 2014, 2007; Dai­
gle, 2016; LaDuke and Churchill, 1985; Povinelli, 2002). Glen Coulthard
(Yellowknives Dene, 2007; Coulthard, 2014) and Audra Simpson
(Mohawk, 2007, 2014) emphasize that the use of rigid juridical cate­
gories for legal recognition in the Canadian context has led to Indige­
nous peoples’ misrecognition, forced economic development, and,
ultimately, refusals to participate. South American scholars consider the
political ontology of conflicts, where multiple worlds are forced to enter
rational state logics that are by design exclusionary (De la Cadena, 2015;
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Geoforum 127 (2021) 269–282
Blaser, 2009; Escobar, 2017; Tironi and Farías, 2015). Together these
studies indicate the historical injustices of state lawmaking which are
laid bare when Indigenous jurisdictions (c.f. Pasternak, 2014) are arti­
culated, and multiple worlds are present.
Political ecology studies of water have long explored the material
and social forms of dispossession connected to privatization of water and
extractivism’s impacts on water resources (Swyngedouw, 2009; Bakker,
2013; Perreault, 2013, 2015) Studies attend to the asymmetrical power
relations and produced socio-natural landscapes whene different parties
engage water governance strategies that structure access to and exclu­
sion from water (Bakker, 2003, 2010; Boelens and Vos, 2014; Cantor
et al., 2020; Meehan, 2014; Roth et al., 2015, Swyngedouw, 2005;
Zwarteveen et al., 2005). Some scholars find that statemaking produces
cultural politics within Indigenous people and their water relations in
order to facilitate water dispossession (Boelens, 2015; Hidalgo et al.,
2017). Contradictorily, laws such as the human right to water can be
enacted to reinforce Indigenous water dispossession (Radonic, 2017).
Perreault (2013) finds that Indigenous campesino communities in the
Bolivian Altiplano are dispossessed of their livelihoods as the result of
three processes of accumulation through mining water, territory, and
toxicity. Together, these studies stress the interconnections of cultural
forms of dispossession to nature’s materiality. A range of violences are
committed by nation states and private companies’ extractive agendas,
including dividing communities located on the shifting frontiers of
extractivism (McNeish and Shapiro, 2021).
Similarly, growing studies documents energy development’s con­
nections to dispossession (see Baka, 2017; McEwan, 2017; McCarthy,
2015; Sovacool et al., 2019; Yenneti et al., 2016). Critical social science
research grapples with the equity concerns and place-based impacts of
the low carbon energy transition (Calvert et al., 2019; Curley, 2018;
Finley-Brook and Thomas, 2011; Furnaro, 2019; Kelly, 2019; McCarthy,
2015; Newell and Phillips, 2016). While in some places renewable en­
ergy development is a site for decolonization (Lennon, 2017), energy
infrastructures form part of racist systems with structural inequalities
(Baker, 2021). Baka (2017) demonstrates how the political ecology of
energy in jatropha plantations in India creates dispossessions which
enclose the commons and weaken rural energy security as part of India’s
commitment to biofuel economy, which is currently being furthered by
the Modi government. Also in India, Yenneti et al. (2016) find that
mega-solar projects further marginalize vulnerable populations through
enclosing the commons via extra-legal land seizures. Finally, research
examines how United States state laws for dam building on Indigenous
lands create infrastructures that link dispossessed land and water to
energy management (Estes, 2017, 2019; Colombi, 2012; Dallman et al.,
2013; Middleton Manning, 2018; Strube and Thomas, 2021; Whyte,
2016, 2019).
Combined, these works frame hydropower as part of a process of
colonization that enrolls multiple forms of dispossession. Indigenous
rights claims are often contingent on how these politics transpire. Below,
I explain Chile’s laws that form part of these dynamics.
4. Chile’s legal nexus enabling hydropower dispossession
In this section, I contextualize historical land titling laws and
informal practices beginning in the 1850s because these earlier enclo­
sures articulate with hydropower’s dispossessions today. Then I situate
hydropower dispossession in neoliberal lawmaking from the Chilean
dictatorship to Chile’s current democracy (1973-present). Four legal
domains are relevant to hydropower conflicts and Indigenous rights:
Electricity law (Electric Law/Ley Eléctrica 1982), Water law (Water
Code/Código de Aguas 1981), Environmental law (Environmental Law/
Ley Ambiental 19.300), and Indigenous jurisprudence (Indigenous law/
Ley Indígena 19.300 and Decrees (40 and 66), the latter regulating
Chile’s ratification of International Labor Organization (ILO) Conven­
tion 169 for Indigenous rights.
Jurisprudence for land dispossession during early land laws
S.H. Kelly
(1886–1929) created a racial landscape of fundos and reduced Mapuche
lands (Almonacid, 2009). Fundos are medium-sized farms granted to
Chilean and German settlers from the 1850s until 1929 (Bengoa, 1999;
Melin Pehuen et al., 2017). The Law of 4 de Diciembre of 1866 allowed
the Chilean state to donate or sell Mapuche land and to create Merced
titles for Indigenous lands; much land during this time was controver­
sially labeled vacant land (tierra baldía) that was not in use and thus
became state property (Almonacid, 2009). Merced land titles are
Indigenous land titles granted between 1884 and 1929. During this time,
settlers seized considerably more land through extra-legal means than
was allocated via courts (Correa Cabrera, 2021). A key legal ambiguity
was determining who was Mapuche and who was not, a fact that often
went to judges to determine (Almonacid, 2009).
The reducción territorial (territorial reservation or reduction) took the
U.S. system as a guiding example; the remaining land in Mapuche hands
after the violent Occupation of the Araucanía (1861–83) was seen as a
mechanism to incorporate them into capitalism (Pairican and Urrutia,
2021). The legal imposition of the reduction system diminished collec­
tive Indigenous land between 1884 and 1929, allocating Merced titles
for roughly 6% of historical Mapuche land (Aylwin et al., 2013; Bauer,
2014). Dispossession of Mapuche lands was permitted by the law, weak
state oversight, and insufficient administrative organization (Vergara
et al., 1996). Informally, settler speculation and deception of Mapuche
people were commonplace (Correa et al., 2002, 2003). The Merced
titling process overlooked traditional Mapuche socio-political organi­
zation and significant areas of Mapuche territory that were previously
titled through Commissary titles (1824–1848), while allocating
bordering land to settlers (Aylwin et al., 2013; Comisión de Verdad
Histórica y Nuevo Trato 2003).7 To consolidate these changes in land
tenure, Austral Property Laws include the 1927 Law for the Division of
Indigenous Communities and the Law of Austral Property (February 11,
1928) which granted two years to have all land recognized and
sub-divided to individual title holders. Pairican and Urrutia (2021)
assert that Mapuche people have been in a permanent struggle for land
recuperation since the creation of reductions.
Due to lawmaking during the military dictatorship (1973–1990)
with little political debate, Chile became a text-book example of
neoliberal governance, and for natural resources in particular (Büchi,
2012; Bauer, 1998; Klein, 2007). Mapuche lands were affected by
Decree-Law 2.568, which dissolved communal Indigenous lands.8
Decree-Law 2.568 allowed Merced land titles to be transferred to private
individual ownership and cease to be recognized as Indigenous lands.
Additionally, the Water Code of 1981 (D.F.L. 1122) states that all waters
are national, and creates the terms for one to own the “right to use”
water (Art 5.).9 Scholars find that these two laws combined to system­
atically dispossess Indigenous families of their land and ancestral waters
(Aylwin et al., 2013; Duquesnoy, 2012; Prieto, 2016; Yáñez & Molina,
2011).10 Except for waters that exist completely within a land property
(a stream, lake, wetland within one property), the Water Code defines
the right to use water as independent from land ownership (Art. 20).
Effectively, the code created the legal rules for the water market to
function (Bauer, 1998, 2004; Budds, 2004) separate from land. Legally,
if there is water available, the DGA (General Water Directorate) must
grant new water use rights (derechos de aprovechamiento) to the applicant
(Art. 5). Overall, little information was available to the public, allowing
third parties to solicit water rights from all over Chile without consulting
7
A noteworthy oversite for Mapuche-Williche territory.
8 11
Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile, “Decreto ley 2568,” Ley Chile,
accessed August 15, 2021.
9
Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile, “D.F.L. 1.122 Código de Aguas,”
Ley Chile, accessed July 20, 2021, translated by author.
10
During this time, 2,918 Mapuche communities were reportedly divided,
corresponding to 519,257 ha (Comisió n de Verdad Histó rica y Nuevo Trato,
2003).
272
Geoforum 127 (2021) 269–282
local populations (Bauer, 1998, 2004; Budds, 2004). Critically, to allow
for the establishment of hydropower in the upper areas of watersheds
without affecting downstream rights, the Code created “non-consump­
tive water rights” for uses like hydropower and aquaculture which re­
turn water downstream (Bauer, 2009). Today, growing water conflicts
across Chile demonstrate the inequities of this model, made more stark
by climatic change.
In 1994 under the Concertación government, the National Environ­
mental Framework Law (LBMA 1994, Law 19.300) created the base of
Chile’s environmental regime including the Environmental Impact
Assessment (EIA).11 Whether a project or activity enters the assessment
as an Environmental Impact Study is primarily dictated by a list of ac­
tivities in Article 10 and a list of areas of impact in Article 11 of Law
19.300 (Art. 8 LBGMA). According to the law, private consultancy
groups and the companies employing them must assess if an activity or
project creates a significant environment impact which justifies a full
Environmental Impact Study (Art. 2 j LBGMA). A key distinction is
whether impacts are significant or not, which is calculated by either a
quantitative or qualitative estimation as a Predication of Impacts. Im­
pacts and baseline data must be assessed within a designated area, the
Area of Influence. Defining the Area of Influence is a critical spatial step
in the assessment process.
Overall, it is quite unfair that Indigenous involvement in these de­
cisions (primarily via the Indigenous Consultation) is largely left to
private companies to decide, by virtue of their reporting a “significant
impact” or not. Indigenous Consultation in Chilean law is contingent on
these articles in Environmental Law 19.300, specifically in instances of
significant impact. Chile initially recognized Indigenous rights in its
Indigenous Law, which allowed for Indigenous communities to be
created with legal status (19.253 of 1994).12 In 2008, Chile ratified In­
ternational Labor Organization’s Convention 169 Treaty for Indigenous
Rights (hereafter ILO Convention 169) and entered it into law in 2009
(Decree 239). In relation to environmental law, ILO Convention 169
terms were included by (Decree 40), then the Indigenous Consultation
was codified by Decree 66 in 2014. Combined, these two decrees limit
Indigenous Consultation to occur only in instances of significant impacts
as outline in Law 19.300 (Art. 11 Law 19.300). Ultimately, private
consultants define the “Area of Direct Influence” for a project and
evaluate the significance of impacts, thus determining who is considered
to be a directly affected person or community, and whether a project
creates significant enough impacts to merit a full Environmental Impact
Study and corresponding Indigenous Consultation (Law 19.300; Guerra,
2017). Next, I turn to my methodology for researching these laws in
practice.
5. Methodology
From 2014 to 2019, I conducted collaborative research with Puel­
willimapu ancestral leaders who guided the Alianza Territorial Puel­
willimapu, including 22 months of in-depth field research from 2016 to
2018. I continue to collaborate in the territory with ancestral leaders and
communities on an intercultural water study. For that initial research
project, my central research question asked: how does small hydropower
development interact with Indigenous rights defense in the Puelwilli­
mapu, Chile? Small hydropower received global support in the clean
energy transition. However, as a category, it differs in definition by
country; internationally a consensus is emerging that small hydro
Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile, “Ley 19.300, accessed August
10, 2021. In 2010, Law 20.417 created a Service for Environmental Assessment
and in 2012 the Law 20.600 created Environmental Courts in Chile. See Tecklin
et al. (2011) for an in-depth article on these institutional environmental
changes.
12
Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile, “Ley 19.253,” Ley Chile,
accessed July 20, 2021.
S.H. Kelly Geoforum 127 (2021) 269–282

projects generate between 1 and 10 megawatts (MW); while in Chile, it

is legally defined as generating 20 MW or less (Kelly-Richards et al.,
2017). To answer this overarching question, I followed small hydro­
power’s impacts, conflicts, and governance through ethnographic in­
quiry and legal geography. Methods included participatory mapmaking,
transect walks, legal analysis and archival research, semi-structured
interviews (n = 87) and ethnographic observation. Although my pri­
mary research question arose due to an interest in small hydropower,
small and large hydropower conflicts were intertwined. Thus, in this
paper I consider small and large hydropower projects proposed in the
Puelwillimapu territory.13
As an Irish American geographer from the northeastern colonial-
settled United States (Abenaki lands), I came to work with the Alianza
because they were looking for technical support to understand hydro­
power encroachments. When I first arrived, I was introduced to the
Lonko (spiritual-political leaders) of the Puelwillimapu territory
through shared contacts and followed the territorial order by asking
their permission to conduct research. The Alianza was already compiling
information on the same topic. After long discussions of research ob­
jectives and territorial history over shared mate tea which is ritually
passed around the group, the Alianza invited me to conduct collabora­
tive research. Their first request was that I make a map of non-
consumptive water rights for their territory.
The research protocol we followed was dictated by the Alianza and
their Azmapu. In general, during field research in the Puelwillimapu
territory I was always accompanied by an ancestral leader. Overall, we
made collective decisions regarding the research questions posed,
methods utilized, editing of written relevant sections, and aspects of
data analysis. Protocol also included their deciding what information
left the territory, and agreement on publication procedure. Drawing
from my training in community-based participatory research (CBPR), I Map 2. Map by author of Mapuche Territory. Left map image is the Wallmapu
reflexively adapted the research methodology to the community- (all Mapuche territory in Chile and Argentina), pictured in purple on a map of
identified needs (Austin, 2010) of the Alianza and the research proto­ South America. Right image is the Willimapu, Mapuche-Williche territory,
col they guided. pictured in orange on a map of Chile.
Mapuche-Williche communities and leaders formed the Alianza
Territorial Puelwillimapu, an autonomous traditional organization of By creating and looking at different maps together in Mapuche
leaders and communities, in 2006 during their resistance to the pro­ traditional meeting, Trawun, over time, we systematized dispossession.
posed large hydropower intervention (Maqueo) in their territory.14 The The Alianza commissioned multiple maps and collaboratively made a
Alianza is connected to an ancestral form of organization around an map of their territory (Map 1). The concept layers of dispossession came
Ayllarewe. An Ayllarewe includes nine Rewe, which are sacred spaces from looking at these layers at first as cartographic layers of a GIS map.
used in ritual practice (Moulian, 2009; Melin Pehuen et al., 2017; Mansilla and Melin Pehuen (2020), during a similar long-term mapping
Mansilla and Melin Pehuen, 2020). The Alianza is both a political and engagement of hydropower conflicts in Mapuche territory (Araucanía),
spiritual organization. The Alianza is a member of the Mapuche Pueblo, describes how Mapuche knowledge guided the mapping process and led
which is the largest Indigenous group in both Chile and Argentina. to the emergence of a different cartographic language.16 Similarly, in
Specifically, they identify as part of the Mapuche-Williche people, who our collaboration, a cartographic language emerged giving voice to
are the people of the south, located in between the Toltén River and dispossession over time and asserting an Indigenous jurisdiction of ter­
Chiloe Island (Map 2).15 For ancestral leaders, harming rivers is equal to ritory (c.f. Pasternak, 2014). For example, we used the words spiritual
harming the lifeblood of the territory; water is vital in political, spiritual, and physical territory to describe how hydropower’s interventions
and socio-cultural realms of life. As others document, running water affected both forms of interrelated territory.
(Witrunko in Mapudgungun) is known by Mapuche people to be different Over time, the research guided by the Alianza initiated a process of
from other types of water as a source of well-being for human and counter-mapping. Counter-mapping is defined by Indigenous peoples’
ecological bodies (Di Giminiani and González Gálvez, 2018; Skewes (among others) as appropriation of state cartographic techniques to
et al. 2012). Machis (ancestral spiritual leaders akin to shaman) use support their territorial claims (Peluso, 1995). Critiques of counter-
different waters found throughout a broader territory for their treat­ mapping document how these practices historically made Indigenous
ments, however only Machi define and know the range of uses of water communities more visible to state control and eventually facilitate
in healing. incorporating their resources into market frameworks (Bryan, 2011;
Hale, 2005; Rocheleau, 2005; Roth, 2007; Wainwright, 2011; Wain­
wright & Bryan, 2009). Our mapping process does fall under the broad
13 umbrella of counter-mapping; however, maps were not used for state
Hydropower sizes are determined by megawatts which are not an accurate
indicator of physical size, consequently the division between large and small is recognition of property rights as was common in the territorial turn in
discursive and not physically descriptive (Kelly-Richards et al., 2017).
14
Nuxam (conversation) with ancestral leaders, Rupumeica, August 8, 2016.
15
Pairican (2012) and Mallon (2004) write Mapuche with a capital M to
16
denote a different pueblo or nation; in different socio-political contexts the See Melin Pehuen et al. (2017) for an in-depth discussion of their cultural
Mapuche Pueblo and the Mapuche nation are commonly referenced by Mapu­ cartography project in the Wallmapu. See also Carraro et al. (in press) for a
che leaders. conversation on decolonizing the cartography of disasters in the Wallmapu.

273
S.H. Kelly
Latin America (c.f. Offen, 2003). Hart (2006) suggests that comparative
ethnographic data can expand how we understand dispossession.
Furthermore, Pualani Luis (Kanaka Hawa’i, 2004) reminds that whether
about mythology or scientific endeavors, maps tells stores about people
and their important places. By combining ethnographic and legal in­
quiry through objects like maps, I learned about dispossession’s spatial
expressions across culture, water, and land. Correspondingly, I wrote
two legal reports as an expert for cases in the Environmental Courts.17
Critically, the Alianza’s research protocol placed limits to what and
how we mapped their territory. For example, they decided not to geo­
locate sites of cultural and spiritual significance. Anthropologist and
Mohawk tribal member Audra Simpson (2007) explains the importance
of tribal members placing limits to ethnographic research, introducing
the concept of ‘ethnographic refusal’. These decisions safeguard certain
aspects of their worlds from being brought into ethnographic writing.
This paper, while sole authored, is written with the permission of the
Alianza Territorial Puelwillimapu. It benefits from the insight generated
in past writing collaboration18 and in-person presentations19 as well as
ongoing intercultural water research collaborations. Next, I turn to the
empirical section on hydropower and dispossession in the
Puelwillimapu.
6. Mapping threats, hope, and history: Systematizing
hydropower’s dispossession in Mapuche Territory
6.1. Energy development via private consultants: Cultural dispossession
during project scoping
Energy development involves a nexus of laws. Legally, Chiles market
model of electricity management began with the 1982 Electricity Law.
An amendment in 2004 made it easier for renewables to come online to
the central grid (Short Law II, Bauer, 2009); then the Nonconventional
Renewable Energy Law in 2008 (Law 20.257/2008, Law 20.698)
created favorable economic terms for an auction-based system of
renewable energy and ultimately required that 20% of all installed
electricity come from renewable sources by 2020 (Kelly and Valdés-
Negroni, 2020). Practices and lawmaking for the Energy 2050 policy
during the Bachelet government (2014–18) aimed to reach 70%
renewable energy production of electricity by 2050 (Flores-Fernández,
2020). Energy 2050 sought to increase participation, yet it was critiqued
for appearing to use a different institutional approach without actually
decentralizing decision-making to local participation (Flores-Fernández,
2020).
In practice, onsultancy groups conducting technical studies for
Chilean energy policy contributed to territorial erasure. In 2014, the
Ministry of Energy coordinated studies of a select number of watersheds
through Chile that they identified as apt for hydropower development
(Ministerio de Energía, 2016). Detailed maps were made by the con­
sultancy groups in preparation with meeting with local stakeholders
depicting rivers, Merced land titles, and conservation areas.20 For En­
ergy 2050, consultancy groups were charged with mapping the areas of
local value to ostensibly identify areas to develop energy projects with
minimal conflict. But this policy overlooked how rivers form an integral
part of the physical and spiritual geography of Mapuche territory.
Ministerio de Energía (2016) studies used a methodology where “points
of value” in the watershed were identified and then added up – the lower
17
Kelly (2018).
18
Territorial text written by and with the Alianza Territorial Puelwillimapu
published in Kelly, 2018.
19
Presentations given with the Alianza in conferences in San Pedro de Ata­
cama, Santiago, and Valdivia during 2016-17.
20
The first study was directed by a research group from Pontifica Universidad
Católica de Santiago. In Mapuche territory, the consultancy group Grupo Teco
conducted the research.
274
Geoforum 127 (2021) 269–282
the points, the more viable the section of the watershed was for hy­
dropower. For the Bueno basin (known as Wenuleufu in Mapudungun),
the study and its results provoked anger and indignation among mem­
bers of the Alianza who saw that data was poorly documented and
insufficient. According to this analysis, Lago Ranco’s Mapuche presence
was significantly underestimated and undervalued, thus technically
making it apt for hydropower development.
Energy development’s cartographic exercises provoked a response
from Mapuche communities throughout the Wallmapu to counter-map
their territories. Physical maps then became part of hybrid resistance
strategies (c.f. Curley, 2021) that involved administrative and legal
channels as well as efforts to decolonize state encounters and assert
Mapuche geography. In a follow-up meeting with Ministry of Energy
officials in Santiago (December 2016), Alianza leaders explained how
they understood energy impacts within their territory (see Table 1).
Pointing to a map from our collaboration unfolded on the conference
room table, they explained how questions of upstream and downstream,
common to environmental impact assessments, were irrelevant to their
Indigenous jurisdiction. As one Lonko described:
“First Maqueo provoked a major problem. It was the first project that
brought pressing problems to a tranquil territory. So today when we
speak about territorial representation, I want you to understand that
I live here and if they build a hydropower project here [indicates
each point on the map] it will affect me where I live, it will affect the
Lonko here, it will affect the Lonko if they build Ataia here. If Ataia
builds the project here in this watershed, those two watersheds
[upstream] will be affected”.21
As this quote demonstrates, a Mapuche spatial knowledge of impacts
was being overlooked by energy development.
Across economic development projects, consultancy groups infor­
mally engage practices of outreach that erode Mapuche cultural prac­
tices. Ancestral authorities are often left out of consultations due to their
opposition. In each of the cases included in Table 1, private consultants
divided Mapuche communities, primarily by spurring the formation of
new juridical Indigenous communities and representative organizations
during consultation for hydroelectric projects. Chile’s Indigenous Law
(19.253) formally recognizes Mapuche among other Indigenous people
according to their last names. Conducting scoping studies for the EIA
process, consultants often provoked the creation of Mapuche juridical
communities with people who have Mapuche last names but have
ceased to practice Mapuche culture (i.e., practice ceremonies, partici­
pate in cultural events). Environmental Law (19.300) allows juridical
communities to receive the mitigation benefits (financial compensation)
of the development project.
Officially in the Environmental Assessment for the Puelwillimapu, 14
projects were under environmental review. An additional four small
hydropower projects were operating, none of which underwent envi­
ronmental review.22 In the cases of Central Osorno and Central las
Flores, Mapuche claimants took these cases to the environmental courts
to successfully challenge the Area of Direct Influence and expand it.
Additionally, for the Florín cases, Mapuche community members
appealed to the Chilean Environmental Assessment Agency to have them
conduct a full EIS and consider the synergic impacts of the projects.
Today, the Maqueo project is desisted, the Florín projects are desisted,
and the Osorno project is on hold.
Cultural dispossession is not one specific action, but instead occurs
via multiple practices as consultants perform scoping for projects. For
21
Meeting with two Ministry of Energy officials, December 11, 2016.
22
In Chile, hydropower projects generating 3 MW or less are permitted to send
a letter of pertinence to the agency that regulates EIAs (Law 19.3000). Small’
hydropower projects (Riñinahue, Las Flores) avoided Indigenous consultation
despite creating significant social and environmental impacts, which I have
written about elsewhere (Kelly, 2019).
S.H. Kelly Geoforum 127 (2021) 269–282

example, in the Osorno project consultants have interceded in which

supreme court, since sacred sites were affected including one site being flooded. Area
While desisted, the water rights of the Maqueo project are currently being used for the

Machi (spiritual leader) and other communities appealed to have the project enter the

extended given the “synergic impacts” of multiple projects. One lof stopped meeting
Mapuche leaders filed an administrative appeal to have two of these projects conduct
communities participate in the Lepün ceremony near the Pilmaiquen

proposed Claro project discussed in the introduction, which involves creation of an

collectively due to the creation of new juridical communities during consultation (

communities and convinced them to desist their case at the supreme court (Kelly
River as a result of proceedings in an EIA process and follow-up court

a full environmental study and successfully argued that the area of influence be
environmental assessment since the project affected a waterfall of spiritual and
environmental significance and they were not consulted, however it proceeded
Mapuche communities won administrative and legal cases that questioned the

Mapuche communities brought this case to the environmental and ultimately

project’s area of direct affectation and the legality of how communities were
cases in the Second and Third Environmental Courts of Chile.23 Ances­

of influence was contested in proceedings. The company met with certain

tral leadership is contested, and the traditional form of meeting and

alternative entity for consultation that undermines ancestral leadership.

territorial decision-making, Trawun, becomes at times too contentious to
function. With the Florín projects, for example, the ancestral commu­

without consultation or an environmental study (Kelly, 2019).

nities that form part of the Lof Huequecura where there is a Merced title
stopped meeting collectively after one community received undisclosed
mitigation payments. Across projects, I heard affected communities
explain that private consultants opened early non-transparent negotia­
tions with select Mapuche people instead of holding open consultations
in the broader territories. Over time, I documented strategies and tactics
of consultancy companies included holding hidden meetings with
disparate groups and providing nontransparent payments that created

Kelly and Valdés-Negroni, 2020).

distrust in the surrounding territory (see also Cardoso et al., 2021).
Elsewhere, I have written with colleagues about how hydropower pro­
jects have led to the process of Indigenous Consent being commodified
in drawn-out court cases (Kelly et al., 2021). These rifts cut into the
social cohesion of a territory, and the collective authority of ancestral
Conflict Status

leaders.24 Critically, these cultural interventions are permitted by

et al., 2021).
consulted.

environmental and Indigenous laws.

6.2. Mapping historical layers of dispossession, connecting law-territorial

interventions
22 Million USD for

for Florin 2 and 3

$2.6 Million USD

53.7 Million USD

$75 million USD

investment $1

Erasure and dispossession of Mapuche cultural practices hinge on

Billion USD

earlier water and land loss in Mapuche territory. Mapping all forms of
Unknown
Projected

Florín 1;

extractive businesses in the territory – hydropower, aquaculture, and

Cost

private conservation areas – facilitated identifying connections with

historical land dispossession (see Map 3).25 Viewing the map, we
400 MW dam with reservoir using projected 83 m3/s

Initially 2.2 MW dam with reservoir using 0.9 m3/s

0.839 MW in run-of- river project142 using 2.0 m3/s

29.34 MW via four cascading run-of- river projects;

three approved projects projected to use 23.2 m3/s

confirmed that each hydropower project was located within a fundo, as

was every aquaculture project and private conservation area.26 Energy
infrastructure design for 1.95 m3/s of water

projects were thus able to enter the territory due to an earlier layer of
of water; amplified 4.4 MW project with

dispossession.
During eight historical workshops with the Alianza, we discussed
these layers. Land was dispossessed in the Puelwillimapu at different
points over time – the arrival of the German and Chilean settlers in the
System Design and Capacity

58 MW dam with reservoir

mid to late 1800s and the Occupation of the Araucanía (1860–1883).

Other important moments include the Ley Austral in the 1930s and the
push to survey mountains and remote areas in the 1960s for the estab­
lishment of national parks and public lands. Land was in some cases
recuperated during the Agrarian Reform of democratic Chile and then
of water

of water

of water

most often lost during counter reform of the Pinochet dictatorship.27

Lonko Panguilef narrated: “When they first came to cut the forest, we let
Hydropower projects involving spatial conflicts in the Puelwillimapu.

them. But we did not know that it would lead to all of this invasion, what
Entered as Environmental Impact Study in 2009. Project
Received environmental approval in 2009, project still

Operating since 2013. Entered via letter of pertinence;

they are trying to do today with the hydroelectric projects, with our
Environmental Assessment Study and one via letter of
Operating since 2016. Entered via letter of pertinence
submitted and received approval for Declaration of

Desisted in 2019. Three projects approved, two via

rivers.”28
From the mid 1800s to early 1900s, dispossession of the lower Bueno
Environmental Impact for amplification

23
Rol R-190–2018 and Rol R-78–2020, related to the Osorno and Los Lagos
projects.
24
Tironi and Sannazzaro (2017) find that in the case of a participatory wind
in-process of development

power project in Chiloe Island where Mapuche Williche people were positioned
as co-owners, this intervention altered the representational politics of the
communities.
Year Entered EIA

desisted in 2011

25
Huiliñir-Curío et al. (2019) explain how private conservation areas express
extractive dynamics using the Huilo Huilo reserve case study, which border the
pertinence.

Puelwillimapu territory to the north.

26
To create this map, we added layers available online via Chilean govern­
ment agencies that included property ownership of water and land, as well as
different economic development projects in the territory that entered the
Riñinahue

Environmental Impact Assessment process.

Projects
Las Flores
Maqueo

27
Mapuche communities used direct action during the agrarian reform and
Osorno
Project
Table 1

Hidro-

Florín

the counter-reform (Pairican and Urrutia, 2021).

28
Author’s translation. Trawun in Rupumeica, November 2016.

275
S.H. Kelly
Map 3. Map created by collaborator José Miguel Vadés-Negroni. (Forms of land tenure indicated on the second map includes Merced Land Titles in pink and
conservation areas in light green, both private conservation areas and public national parks. Stars indicate legal Indigenous communities registered with CONADI.
Red dots depict non-consumptive water rights ownership. Lightning bolts and fish on the map symbolize active water rights connected to a project proposed in the
Environmental Assessment.)
River led to families moving further up in the Andean foothills. How­
ever, at the same time families moved to the cordillera fleeing violence
from Argentina and further north, in what became the Araucanía re­
gion.29 Ultimately, Mapuche families settled along riparian corridors of
rivers and lakes; areas today targeted by water control for hydropower
and aquaculture. In terms of law-territory relationships, “layers of
dispossession” express as fragmented geographies where forced migra­
tion and socio-cultural and material change are imprinted on the
landscape.
Mapmaking, and mappinging as process,s formed part of a decolonial
learning in territory wide Trawun. For example, how the formation of
the Chilean state and the Catholic religion were imposed alongside the
Spanish military fort system. Puelwillimapu collective memory
confirmed violent histories connected to land tenure upheavals. For
example, the location of Spanish forts and an adjoining mission in
Chilean history is directly related to areas of historical dispossession and
displacement of the Mapuche population (Molina, 1990), and they are
related to massacres that are in the living memory of local
Mapuche-Williche families.
A map of non-consumptive water rights (Map 4) requested by the
Alianza represents a more recent layer of dispossession. While many
water rights were granted from the 1980s on, rivers in Mapuche-
Williche territory have remained relatively undisturbed particularly in
29
We used two books (Molina, 1990 and Vergara et al., 1996) to triangulate
collective memory with historical research.
276
Geoforum 127 (2021) 269–282
mountainous areas until the recent energy transition. Water rights
ownership determines the location of a hydropower project. Yet, elec­
tricity law governs connection to the grid. All hydropower projects in
the territory are part of water and energy markets that plan for elec­
tricity sales via the electricity market; this means all projects join Chile’s
Central Interconnected system via distribution lines (until they reach
maximum capacity as they did in Puelwillimapu) or by building a high
voltage transmission line (generating over 23 kv). A high voltage line
was proposed, and the Citizen Participation portion of EIS was
completed before the projects desisted in 2019; the Florín projects then
also desisted because they were no longer economically viable. Thus, the
spatiality of hydropower dispossession today is determined by land–­
water-electricity laws across different time periods, connecting to mul­
tiple temporalities of injustice and loss.
6.3. Politics of Mapuche resurgence in legally plural water conflicts
Amidst these conflicts, a politics of resurgence emerged in the wa­
terways of Puelwillimapu territory. This re-articulation of territorial
relations with waterways is similar to Daigle’s (Mushkegowuk; Daigle,
2018) narration of the resurgence of Indigenous relations through water
in the Mushkegowuk lands of settled Canada. During Trawun, many
youths and elders, participated and shared Pewma (dreams shared
collectively in Mapuche culture) and occasionally Pelom (visions shared
collectively in Mapuche culture) that brought them to participate in the
territorial defense. During a Trawun in September 2017, one Nguillatufe
S.H. Kelly
Map 4. Non-consumptive Water Rights in the Puelwillimapu Territory. Map created by José Miguel Valdés-Negroni.
shared: “For the same reason, I am participating in this Trawun, because
I saw this Trawun two to three months ago. In the dream that I had, the
ancestors told us to call the Weichafe (spiritual warriors).” In the pro­
tection of waterways,Mapuche identities shifted and deepened for many
involved.
For Mapuche territory, what is being extracted are Mapuche re­
lations to living water. While writing an expert report for a case
involving the Pilmaiquen projects, I interviewed the Machi Millaray
(ancestral authority and healer) who had invited me to write the report.
I posed the argument I heard others repeat in Chilean institutions – the
river was already intervened with a hydropower project upstream, so
what would two more projects mean? “The river still has newen (vital
force). I see it on Wetripantu (Mapuche New Year, winter solstice) rise
and connect with the river above. If two more projects come, it may not
have enough newen anymore.”30 What the Machi indicates is a central
knowing in their cosmovision that during Wetripantu, the rivers below
connect to the rivers above, and those who have passed during the year
go up into the Milky Way. This, too, is part of how their water cycles in
spiritual territory. Thus, water dispossession constitutes an intervention
into the Mapuche Pueblo’s way of reproducing itself as a people by
intervening in ancestors’ ability to continue their journey to other
dimensions.
Culturally, however, dispossession is not a zero-sum affairevent.
Ancestral leadership is eroded while ancestral knowledge is resurging.
One strategy to decolonize the law that the Alianza began to adopt was
30
Author’s translation from Spanish (excluding italicized word
Mapudungun).
Geoforum 127 (2021) 269–282
to demand they be consulted at the scale of territory instead of as in­
dividual communities, asserting an Indigenous jurisdiction (c.f. Pas­
ternak, 2014). This trend was echoed by other groups affected by
hydropower in nearby territories, such as the Asociación Wenuleufu in
the case of Central Osorno. Demands resulted in partial administrative
successes over time. During repeated mapmaking sessions, over time,
leaders began to publicly refer to the territory and not to the two
comunas (communes) that divide the territory. Observations made dur­
ing mapping were later repeated during speeches and political meetings.
These differences are illustrated in a meeting with regional officials
in Futrono, with maps pinned behind them. One Lonko explained:
“Hydropower and aquaculture projects are arriving, and at the
moment of deciding who to consult they follow a certain logic, and
they always consult communities who are farthest away from un­
derstanding the impacts of these projects. As a territory, we decide
how we are affected. As Mapuche, we know our territory extends
from the mountain to the sea. […] I do not know if you all under­
stand the Mapuche Pueblo’s cosmovision. It tells of our spirits trav­
eling by water, of us needing water for our ceremonies. Each
ceremony of the Mapuche Pueblo is linked directly to water, each
territory in the watershed of Lago Ranco is linked with one another
[…] When they affect our territory, they affect our Mapuche spiri­
tuality. Today Convention 169 is ratified by the Chilean state. Gov­
ernment agencies should know the convention and understand who
to speak with and how to speak.”31
31
in Trawun on August 17, 2016, with Intendente of the Ríos region and
Governor of Ranco Province in Futrono, Chile.
277
S.H. Kelly
In response, the regional official (Intendente) explained:
“Yes, it is affecting you all more than the rest of the community, it is
true. These activities align with a view of development that you all
do not share. That difference is pretty critical. But unfortunately, this
development follows a form of governance and conception of
development that is years in the making. This is not just today’s
issue. Many of these projects are not approved. Others have been
approved for a number of years. We as a government only have two
and half years, so it is not in our hands to resolve these situations”.
This meeting is one moment where the plural legal strategies of the
Alianza are apparent. Here, the Alianza opened spaces for dialogue with
Chilean state officials that did not formally exist in Environmental Law
19.300 and Decree 66 for Indigenous Consultation. Following a similar
strategy of communities one watershed to the north, they held a road
blockade to demand this meeting. The Alianza articulated their rights
via a combination of social mobilization and administrative filings.32
Aspects of Mapuche knowing defy legal and administrative recog­
nition; here counter-mapping helped to visualize this ontological over­
sight. Working with the Lof Rupumeica, we created a Map of Hope (Map
1). The map depicts the Ngen and rivers of the territory, communicating
the spiritual-territorial geography without geolocating sites of signifi­
cance. It provided a visual aid to the Alianza’s explanation that directly
affected communities are upstream, and not just downstream. In spiri­
tual territory, rivers cycle out to the ocean and then back up to the
mountaintops as a daily cycle. The map also elicited explications of
important uses of territory outside the bounds of private property. One
Werken (messenger) explained ancestral use of mountain top plateaus in
summer months, where they bring sheep to feed and search for partic­
ular Lawen (plant medicine) that cannot be found elsewhere. Later,
Alianza leaders used this map in the dialogue with the Ministry of En­
ergy, and in public presentations, to explain the physical and spiritual
geography of their rivers.
7. Discussion
Legal geographies of dispossession bring together space and time in
current infrastructural projects. Their architecture indicates how envi­
ronmental injustices are performed and are structurally influenced by
past territorial interventions. In this case we see how the process of
building infrastructure brings together multiple laws that have sup­
ported dispossession over time. Layers of dispossession refers to these
temporal phases in lawmaking that remake the landscape; while
spatially extensive, in Mapuche territory these layers express as frag­
mentation, displacement, and patchy enclosures.
In this paper I use the concept layers of dispossession to systematize
the interwoven law and territorial relationships that manifest as private
property enclosures, invasive infrastructures, and Indigenous displace­
ment. In terms of water, we can see forms of hydro-extractivism that
extract value from aspects of water, affecting water quality and quantity.
However, these layers also relate other forms of discrimination, abuse
and appropriation. Similar to the work of scholars like Prieto (2021)
who finds that Chile’s neoliberal water model provokes Indigenous
resurgence among the Atacameño people of northern Chile, I also
demonstrate how dispossession is intimately tied to Mapuche resur­
gence. Mapuche people and their territory respond with healing and
deepened processes of spiritual connection, along with internal conflict
provoked by these forms of intervention. Dispossession as process is thus
also constituted by ancestral knowledge and spiritual relationships be­
tween land, waterways, Mapuche people and more-than-human entities
32
Administrative appeals involved the Florín cases, the Las Flores project, the
Maqueo project, and the Osorno project. Both Flores and Osorno saw favorable
cases in the environmental courts and are currently being reviewed in the Su­
preme Court.
278
Geoforum 127 (2021) 269–282
like Ngen.33 I say this not to romanticize the process, but to bring
attention to the circular knowing in Indigenous lifeworlds that defy
overly simplified narratives of linear loss. A multi-temporality is present
in dispossession that we can access via the conceptual device of layers.
Methodologically, mapping layers of dispossession involves system­
atizing what was lost, what changed, and what challenges are posed by
those losses to Indigenous rights claims today. One cultural difference is
that Chilean cartography does not align with how Mapuche people use
territory. For example, one important difference is the Chilean state
geolocates juridical Indigenous communities under Indigenous Law
19.253 as points on a map. In contrast, ancestral uses and practices of
territory involve more extensive areas. For cultural cartography reports
that I have written for court cases, I have worked with collaborators
including lawyers and artists to use artistic methods to interpretatively
map Mapuche cartography that does not align with Chilean cartography.
Grappling with the multiplicity of dispossession requires interdisci­
plinary research, and in this collaborative setting working with practi­
tioners like lawyers and artists strengthened the contributions that I was
able to make to court cases and in that way support Mapuche
resurgence.
Together, these findings contribute toa move in legal geography to
understand law-society relationships as more-than-human and
decolonized. Indeed, assertions of Indigenous jurisdiction constitute
moments of decolonizing the law (Pasternak, 2014). Indigenous envi­
ronmental justice is about enabling communities to restore their capa­
bility to maintain relations and responsibilities to the land and the
beings therein (Whyte, 2016, 2018). Mapuche people, like other Indig­
enous peoples, hold multivalent sociocultural relations to water, yet
colonialism’s historical legacy challenges their ability to protect these
relations (Wilson, 2014). Mapuche knowledge includes cosmological
premises about water, which are often told in relation to territorial water
sources (Di Giminiani and González Gálvez, 2018). Water is integral to
healing, ceremonial practice and, itrofilmogen,34 among other relations.
Mapuche people use other words like kumemogen35 to express the more-
than-human wellbeing they are protecting in conflicts. As Yazzie and
Risling Baldy (2018) suggest, this knowing of water is part of an
Indigenous theorization of relationships that are multi-spatial, multi-
temporal, and involve multiple species. As such, the political ontology
provoked in these types of conflicts prevents a consensus between
worlds on concept like sustainability (Blaser, 2009) that might be used
to measure renewable energy’s success.
In Mapuche territorial context and its history of colonization, energy
development interacts with dispossession. What this case suggests is that
for energy development it is relevant to examine land politics, but also
laws for water, environment, and Indigenous rights. Jointly, this nexus
of interacting laws are performed as environmental injustices. Similar to
the findings of Harlan’s (2018) research on small hydropower in China,
the expansion of small hydropower into a “low carbon industry” holds
adverse effects for local populations, in particular when there are min­
imal regulatory safeguards in place. Puelwillimapu Mapuche-led oppo­
sition has stalled a number of projects to protect rivers, but cultural
dispossession is visible in the enduring social divisions and altered
Mapuche customs like Trawun and Nguillatun. Intangible aspects of ter­
ritory are being seized in these plural, more-than-human legal
geographies.
A critical limitation to Chile complying with ILO Convention 169
treaty terms is in the design of Environmental law 19.300 which allows
private actors to determine the terms of baseline studies. Stoked by in­
centives for the energy market, the legal technology of “non-
33
An owner or spirit guardian of an element or place (Catrileo, 2017; Grebe,
1993).
34
All life in its integrity, without fragmentation (Chihuailaf, 2004). Today
many translate it colloquially to biodiversity.
35
Living well.
S.H. Kelly
consumptive water rights” brings an array of consultants to Mapuche
territory to scope projects, since under Chilean law water rights must be
assigned if they are available. Scholars of Chilecholars find that private
consultancy groups operate in neoliberal techno-political environments
where certain forms of scientific knowledge are produced for EIS with
questionable methodologies, loose data interpretations, and docu­
mented corruption (Budds, 2009; Barandiaran, 2015; Tironi and
Barandiarán, 2014). My research finds consultancy groups perform
dispossession through informal strategies surrounding the activity of
scoping projects.36 These power-knowledge politics (c.f. Foucault, 1980)
erode the cultural practices of the Mapuche Pueblo. Operating through
Indigenous and environmental law, Chile’s politics of energy also
maintains settler colonial37 logics in subtle ways. For example, technical
constructs like “Area of Direct Influence” applied in an EIS erase the
presence of Mapuche people from a territory.38
Finally, Mapuche strategies are influenced by institutional environ­
mental governance problems throughout Chile. As Borgias (2018) finds,
Chilean citizens must “subsidize the state” to monitor environmental
harm. Furthermore, a need for territorial dialogue is evident in envi­
ronmental conflicts, where local people protest to create spaces for
dialogue with officials (Bauer, 2018). A number of regional and
national-level government officials I spoke with in environmental
agencies including the Superintendence of the Environment, the Min­
istry of Environment, and the Environmental Courts System agree that
conflicts must be addressed territorially yet formal institutional mech­
anisms do not exist. Nationally, Chile’s environmental governance needs
to improve its local inclusion in formal decision-making in a substantial
way to reduce conflicts. These are symptoms of the growing national
unrest that has led to political upheaval, inspiring Chile’s current effort
to rewrite its constitution.
8. Conclusion
In this paper, I explain how hydropower, as an infrastructure and
process, embodies a colonization of water and Indigenous cultural
practices. Examining hydropower as part of a legal geography of
dispossession, I trace how it reinforces historical seizures of Mapuche
land while perpetuating water enclosures and social divisions. I suggest
that mapping layers of dispossession constitutes a method for advancing
legal geography and Indigenous rights studies.
Neoliberal rules and earlier phases of colonization in Chile allow for
multiple layers of dispossession to be imposed on Mapuche territory.
Collaborative research guided by Indigenous protocol stands to docu­
ment dispossession’s spatial patterns and multiple temporalities, which
vary geographically. Informed by counter-mapping with Geographical
Information Systems and artistic methods, I propose considering his­
torical dispossessions as layers. Layers can visualize how resources are
seized, people are displaced, and more-than-human landscapes are
transformed; used in collaborative research I have found they evoke
dialogue on how those losses express culturally and territorially. They
represent how the law works in practice. This socio-spatial approach, I
suggest, can inform legal geographers’ inquiries into spatial injustice.
Here it allows us to trace how layers of co-constituted law and space over
time create ingrained racist structures that erode Mapuche territory.
Renewable energy development is influenced by historical injustices
36
Elsewhere I have published that these groups manipulate the timing of
Indigenous Consultations, maintaining prolonged scoping conversations that
are not within the official Indigenous Consultation (Kelly, 2019; Kelly et al.,
2021).
37
Wolfe (2006) defines settler colonialism as a prolonged historical structure,
not a single event. Chile holds a different history in relation to colonialism by
the Spanish crown than settler colonial states connected to the British empire.
38
Thanks to Felipe Guerra for thinking through this idea with me and to the
generative article by Saito (2014) we discussed.
279
Geoforum 127 (2021) 269–282
and contemporary governance arrangements. While land and water laws
collectively allowed for the dispossession of Mapuche lands and water­
ways, environmental and Indigenous laws permit a privatized politics of
recognition. It is unjust that private actors are granted so much latitude
in determining the terms of Indigenous Consultation, including deciding
the significance of impacts for their projects which then determines
which projects merit local consultation. Overall, neoliberal environ­
mental governance, epitomized in the Chilean case, demonstrates how
an example of sustainability for one institutional system can be an
instance of colonization for Indigenous and local people.
Ultimately, Indigenous rights codification provides important tools
but cannot undo the settler colonial foundation of state jurisprudence
(Correia, 2021). Mapuche communities reterritorialize energy encoun­
ters through articulating their own geography and charting new spaces
for dialogue with state actors. Indigenous jurisdiction offers glimpses of
decolonizing the law (Pasternak, 2014). By focusing on these places
where Indigenous people enact their own form of justice, the field of
legal geography can help to make sense of how complex histories of
private property in Indigenous territories interact with Indigenous self-
determination.
Broadly, this paper contributes to how we understand legal geogra­
phies of cultural and water dispossession. Findings raise concerns for the
energy development methodologies being enacted on Indigenous lands
globally. Critically, scoping for energy projects is a process with signif­
icant cultural impacts that often goes unregulated. Despite Chile’s rati­
fication of International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 Treaty for
Indigenous Rights, in practice laws designed to protect Indigenous rights
permit private actors to dispossess cultural practices and water use of the
Mapuche people. This case indicates the global energy transition must
reckon with legal geographies of dispossession involved in energy
development in order to curb environmental injustices, particularly in
Indigenous lands.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Sarah H. Kelly: Methodology, Investigation, Writing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This research was conducted with the Alianza Territorial Puelwilli­
mapu, guided by their Indigenous Protocol. I thank them for their
collaboration, warmth, and wisdom. I wrote much of this paper as a
postdoctoral scholar in Dartmouth College’s Department of Anthropol­
ogy with funding from the Irving Institute of Energy and Society at
Dartmouth. A related conversation with Laura Ogden, Nick Reo, and
Andrew Curley was generative to my writing of this paper. Thanks to
Elena Louder and Grant Gutierrez for reading drafts. I conducted
research for this paper as a doctoral student at the University of Arizona.
Drs. Sallie Marston, Jeff Bannister, Diana Liverman, and my advisor Carl
Bauer provided comments on an earlier draft. This research was initially
funded by a Fulbright Scholarship, and Inter-American Foundation
Grassroots Development Fellowship, and a PEO Scholarship. Post­
doctoral research was funded by ANID/FONDECYT Postdoctoral grant
#3190867 and CIGIDEN ANID/FONDAP/15110017, Chile. I am grate­
ful to members of Línea 4 Culturas de Desastres research group led by Dr.
Manuel Tironi for the community of practice on critical disaster studies
in Chile and Abya Yala. I am also grateful to my postdoctoral mentors Dr.
Laura Ogden and Dr. Manuel Tironi who both influenced my analysis in
this paper. Finally, I thank members of Dr. Ogden’s Environmental
Ethnography Laboratory for commenting on a later draft of this paper.
S.H. Kelly
All mistakes are my own.
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