SLAUGHTER OF CHILE’S INDIGENOUS PEOPLES WAS GENOCIDE, SAY LEGISLATORS

(Aug. 27, 2007) Legislation proposed last week by the Senate’s Education Committee proposed official recognition of the extermination of the Selk'nam and Aonikenk nomadic hunting cultures – which thrived in Chile’s southern Patagonia area before contact with Europeans – as genocide. The bill, proposed by Socialist Party Senators Pedro Munoz and Ricardo Nunez, would also construct monuments to the slaughter of Chile's indigenous populations in Santiago and the southern city of Porvenir.

Munoz, the senator for the Magellanes area that was home to the Aonikenk, said the legislative proposal is based on findings reported in 2003 by former President Lagos' Commission for Truth in History and New Native Treatment. This group concluded that the decimation of these native populations should be considered genocide.

Munoz said the purpose of the legislation is to establish the existence of these cultures in Chile's history, as they are often left out of school books.

“There is a deep ignorance about these ethnic groups (...) they are not emphasized at all in the schools. The reason for this bill is to recognize these cultures as part of our history, so that future generations will know they existed and what happened to them,” said Munoz.

The Selk'nam, also known as the Onas, arrived on Tierra del Fuego about 7,000 years ago. They were a hunter-gatherer society, depending on guanaco for food. In the mid-nineteenth century, newly-arrived European settlers established sheep ranches nearby. The Selk'nam hunted on these ranches, oblivious to the idea of private property. Ranchers then organized armed groups to attack the native populations, famously establishing a bounty for each Selk'nam ear returned to them.

“The Selk'nam were seen as a problem for the ranches in the area, which is why they were victims of an extermination,” said Munoz.

To stop the slaughter, governing officials attempted to move the Selk'nam to a reservation run by Italian missionaries on Dawson Island in 1890. Still, most Selk'nam eventually fell victim to foreign diseases brought by the Europeans.

For their part, the Aonikenk initially interacted peacefully with early colonizers, often exchanging the fruits of their hunts for European goods. However, they, too, were eventually stricken by violence and illness.

Official recognition of the decimation of these populations and the construction of memorials may be the only means of reparation available. The last full-blooded Selk'nam died in Chile in 1974, while the remaining Aonikenk population almost entirely fled to Argentina by 1905.

 

 

We know pretty well about the extermination of the Onas, done by Northern European settlers with the complicity, and lack of control, of the Chilean Government.

 

Here you have that bastard Romanian called Julius Popper, killing Onas. He was stabbed and killed by its own people, thanks God.

 

 

 

Remember we have fought against Nazis and Fascists for a long time in my country, even before those terms were invented.

But a thing is wrong. This isn't a secret at all. 

 

 

Julius Popper

 

The Chilean settlers put a bounty on the The Selk'nam's heads. They paid a bonus if it was a pregnant women. It's a rare example of a primitve people being headhunted by a developed one, they also laced sheep carcasses with poison and injected Children, unpalateable even by the worst standards of anything that happened in the US west.

 

There were some horrified European visitors who tried to stop this, by offereing the Chilean settlers 5 times they amount of money for Selk'nam alive than they'de be paid for their heads. The Selk'nam were then rehoused and cared for.

 

 

 

 

 

Information in Spanish

http://quechuanetwork.org/news_template.cfm?news_id=1983&lang=f - http://quechuanetwork.org/news_template.cfm?news_id=1983&lang=f

 

What is true, though is that even with the killings, mixings and emigrations, the Ona people is not extinct in Argentina. Only in Chile.

 

Enriqueta Gastelumendi, Ona descendent

 

 

 

More tragical about that is that the settlers of the Land of Fire were mainly Europeans and Chilotes. Those lands were also a common place were low class rascal Europeans, between sailors, fishermen and whalers made a quite brutish fauna. Even more Chilotes are mixed descendents of Spanish and Amerindians that come from Chiloe island!  All of this was monitored with remote control by the central government and did nothing to stop it.

 

Most Chileans weren't even aware of what was going on there before it was too late.

 

In short, no doubt that Hitler would had enjoyed this event, too

 

 

 

There was another example for headhunting in the U.S. for Apaches. Unfortunately you cannot see if a skalp is Apachian, Navaho, Pima or even Mexican. So that practice seems to be common in the New world.

 

What do you expect from a adventurer like Julious Popper who was romanian, probably descendent of Dracula itself .

 

 

Pinguin!!!!!!!!!!

 

headhunting wasn't common in the Americas at all. Skalp is not headhunting, by the way.

The only people that practised headhunting in the Americas were the Jibaroes, which could convert your head in a souvenir .

 

By the way, Jibaroes were so fierce that no European or Amerindian attempted to dominated them. They are now peaceful fellows that shrink animals heads once in a while for tourists.

 

 

Anything of any historical value is strictly out of bounds for the Pakistan studies books. All you hear about there is, oh how great were the muslims, oh how great was the muslim civilization, oh how great was Mahmood of Ghaznavi, Oh how great were the Mughals, oh how evil were the Hindus for (god forbid) for trying to take control of their own lands and so on and on.