In the place we know today as the province of Tierra del Fuego, there lived a people that 6,000 years ago inhabited the inhospitable and cold coasts of the great island at the end of the world; and that today is no longer here.
The Tehuelches, Aonikenk or Patagones are an indigenous people of Patagonia who were located in Patagonia, between the Negro River and the Strait of Magellan (where the city of Puerto Natales is now located), they were known to be very large and seem to have been the basis of the great myth of the Patagonian giants.
The Selk’nam or Onas are an Amerindian people native to the Big Island of Tierra del Fuego, (“Kárwkènká” in the Selknam language) at the southern tip of the American continent, currently the territory of Argentina and Chile.
Originally they were land nomads, hunters and gatherers. After a genocide at the beginning of the 20th century and a process of transculturation that operated for more than a century, the Selk’nam were dispersed across the continent, a number of children were sold in continental ports and the language was extinct for some decades. Fear, ridicule and the official assertion that they were extinct led the Selk’nam to accept invisibilization, but in recent years the Selk’nam communities have begun a process of visibilization, cultural recovery and language revitalization.
The 2010 National Population Census in Argentina revealed the existence of 2761 people who self-identified as Onas throughout the country, 294 of whom in the province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and South Atlantic Islands.6 In the 2017 Chilean Census, 1,144 people self-identified as Selk’nam living in all regions of Chile.
The Kaweskar (also known as Kawashkar among other variants, and called by European navigators in the nineteenth century as Alacalufes, Alakaluf or Halakwulup) are a people native to the southern area of Chile and Argentina. Until the middle of the 20th century they were nomads who traveled in canoes through the southern channels of western Patagonia, between the Gulf of Penas and the Strait of Magellan. In the last century their population was reduced by massacres and death by disease, as well as abandonment of the group. On the other hand, their traditional way of life suffered a strong transformation after the contact with Chileans and foreign navigators. In the 21st century most of the Kawésqar live in the town of Puerto Eden and in the cities of Puerto Natales and Punta Arenas.
