Kia Tae Pākoro: Lessons of CEAD 2018

Abstract

When Camilo Catrillanca (24) died, he had one son and a pregnant wife. He was a weichafe (warrior) of the Mapuche, one of nine indigenous nations recognised in the Chilean Census. I learnt of Camilo’s life and death as a consequence of my attendance at the 2018 hui of Contemporary Ethnography Across the Disciplines (CEAD). I was able to learn about Camilo because I arrived at the hui laden with, aware of, and willing to share my own sorrow (tae pākoro).

This article stories the environment within which the CEAD hui 2018 was held. It discusses the history of settler colonialism in Chile, the problems of Via Chile.a and the suffering of La Araucan.a. The writing reflects my time as a manuhiri in Santiago. It recognises my autoethnographic method’s whakapapa as offspring to a tool of colonisation. Hence, it offers a different form of autoethnography, one that begins with the tangata whenua, the people of the Earth.