Supporting Indigenous self-determination through collective memory
“Who are the Selk’nam?” Hema’ny Molina Vargas asked, gazing out over a lagoon on the Chilean island of Tierra del Fuego. “We are. The Selk’nam people were the first inhabitants of this island,” she continued, glancing back at me. “And, well, in a certain way we are part of this land, we belong to this space, to this island. Here is where our history is, where our ancestors are. And we try to strengthen and recover this collective memory today.”
Across Chile, signs, museums, and even Chileans themselves still describe the Selk’nam people of southern Patagonia as “extinct.” Up until 2023, they were not even recognized under Chilean law. Yet on September 5, 2023, Chile’s National Congress voted to finally recognize the Selk’nam people as one of the 11 original peoples of Chile. While this was lauded internationally, for Selk’nam leaders it was just a small victory in a much larger fight. Hema’ny and her daughter Fernanda Olivares Molina were behind the campaign to gain legal recognition. Now, they’re leading the more complicated effort to put this recognition into practice through public education and continued cultural revitalization.
I met Fernanda and Hema’ny by chance. I was sitting in Denning House in January 2024 when my KHS cohort-mate Saehui Hwang called. Saehui had been traveling around the world on a 1917 sailboat as part of Darwin200, a project retracing the journey made by Charles Darwin to draw attention to conservation-related issues through science, media, and education.
“Do you want to come to Chile in ten days?” Saehui asked.
And just like that, I found myself on a flight to the very southern tip of Chile. Before I left the States, Saehui put me in touch with Fernanda to hear more about her work and discuss sharing her story. The idea would be that videographer Daniel Venturini and I would document the cultural revitalization and environmental work Fernanda and Hema’ny were spearheading.
At first, it felt problematic to do this work in the context of a trip inspired by a scientist who described the Indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego as “miserable degraded savages.” Yet Fernanda insisted that was precisely why they wanted to participate in Darwin200—to flip the narrative from one viewing the Selk’nam as less than human, as specimens, to telling her story on her own terms.
That immediately resonated. I am not Native, but I have focused on Indigenous rights in the United States and across the Americas for the past 12 years. I am drawn to this work because I have seen how centuries of oppressive policies toward Indigenous peoples are reinvented and filter into the present. Before coming to Stanford, I ran a college access program for Native high school students, and few things inspired me more than my students expressing pride in who they are—despite the appalling history of assimilationist policies. To me, there is great power in helping students reclaim educational spaces. Today, as I study international policy, I see a parallel power in strengthening sovereignty through political and legal avenues. And, as an author, I believe stories play a vital role in reclaiming false and damaging narratives.
Once I arrived in Tierra del Fuego, I spent almost a week learning about Fernanda and Hema’ny’s work through their nonprofit, Fundación Hach Saye. The foundation focuses on both internal, cultural revitalization work and external, public-facing education. On the first front, they spearhead efforts to revive and relearn cultural practices and their language. They often coordinate trips to bring other Selk’nam families to Tierra del Fuego to foster connections with their land and community. In their external work, Fernanda and Hema’ny share their stories, pushing back on this extinction narrative. They’ve taught in schools and frequently present on topics related to Selk’nam culture and Indigenous rights more broadly. Their work carries inherent tensions and challenges. As they work to educate others, they meet resistance. And while some residents reject the foundation’s offers to teach real Selk’nam history, souvenir shops sell images of Selk’nam spirits as trinkets—appropriating and commodifying sacred aspects of the culture.
There are also challenges when it comes to learning the Selk’nam language, for which there are seven different dictionaries, all written by non-Selk’nam people. For Fernanda and Hema’ny, each act of cultural revitalization is a delicate braiding together of three strands: oral histories and customs passed down through generations; written accounts by (often extractive) anthropologists; and observing the land today to try to discern what their ancestors would have done. As Hema’ny puts it, “We have fought not to vindicate, but to live our culture again, to get to know it. Beyond just doing these acts of justification, or dressing like the ancestors, we live the culture today and adapt it to our reality.”
As I headed home, I thought about what it looks like to be part of this reframing process, especially as a non-Native person. To me, supporting Indigenous self-determination—whether through storytelling or policy—means forming genuine partnerships based on mutual exchange, with my agenda on the back burner. It means first developing a lens for how paternalism and oppression repeat themselves, then disrupting that dynamic. It means relentlessly self-educating not by "tokenizingly" asking Native people to teach us, but by actually listening to the public voices already speaking out. In staying informed, I should have context for what communities might be facing, without assuming what their realities are. Concretely, this work means going back to Tierra del Fuego this summer on a Steve Steinberg Reporting Award to tell a more complete, nuanced story. It entails continuing a KHeystone Project focused on supporting tribes in accessing federal funding for renewable energy. And in the long term, as I work more directly in policy, it means ensuring that the entities I work for consider Indigenous peoples in everything, from climate change to immigration.
By chance on the plane, I was seated next to a group of Native American students on a kayaking trip through a program called Paddle Tribal Waters. When the dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California come down, these Native students from the Klamath basin will be the first to kayak the river. The student seated closest to me was a citizen of the tribe I used to work with, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, and her sister was a former student of mine. As we spoke about relationship to land, cultural revitalization, and Indigenous rights, I couldn’t help but feel the full-circle nature of the moment. As Native youth in the Northwest paddle the rivers taken from their ancestors, Fernanda learns the language taken from hers.
“You never lose everything,” Fernanda said. “(Our culture) might disappear from view, but in our families, there’s always a part that stays, passed down from one generation to the next.”
Kelsey Freeman (2022 cohort) is a Knight-Hennessy scholar pursuing dual master’s degrees in international policy at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences and environment and resources at the Doerr School of Sustainability. She focuses on immigration policy, Indigenous rights, and climate change and is the author of No Option But North.
Video and photos by Daniel Venturini with project support from Darwin200.
Knight-Hennessy scholars represent a vast array of cultures, perspectives, and experiences. While we as an organization are committed to elevating their voices, the views expressed are those of the scholars, and not necessarily those of KHS.
