Graduation Year

2013

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Environmental Analysis

Second Department

Hispanic Studies

Reader 1

Anna J. Kim

Reader 2

Chris Guzaitis

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2012 Priscilla Pambana Gutto Bassett

Abstract

Beginning in a small informal collective of Mapuche women weavers in Puerto Saavedra, Chile, I explore how ecological knowledge has survived through textile handcraft, passed down from mother to daughter . Through analysis of interviews and observations with the women as weavers , I reflect on the importance of centering Indigenous women's knowledge, systematically excluded from the environmental cannon. The weavers maintain and shape traditions that have survived colonization and its disruption of Indigenous access to land and ways of living. They produce and transmit environmental knowledge on which they depend for subsistence and cultural expression. Using ecofeminism as a framework, I argue that the Mapuche women weavers' knowledge is counternarrative and expert knowledge. Through these stories told by hand and through oral story-telling it becomes clear that it is not enough to simply celebrate their beautiful craft and sustainable ways of interacting with the more-than-human environment; it is essential, also, to engage in activist work towards environmental and social justice.

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