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About me
My name is Christopher Carlos René Catrileo Huenulauf Culbertson. I was born in Santiago, Chile in 1990 and was adopted into an American family when I was 6 months old. My birth mother and father were both Mapuche. I have been raised in America and am currently enrolled at The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio where I am a Cultural Area Studies major with a concentration in Latin American History.
A teaching experience in Chile last summer ignited my interest in learning about different cultures, as well as improving my Spanish language skills. I discovered that my ethnicity enabled me to deeply engage in Chilean culture by building relationships through living and working in a community. Out of that experience came a strong desire to explore Mapuche culture through a similar process, in a Mapuche community. Although I know I am of Mapuche decent, that is the extent of my connection with my heritage because I have never been in contact with the culture in light of my adoption. This dissotiation then,has spured me to develop a better understanding of both Mapuche culture and history which is at the heart of my work.
My Work
I am working in cooperation with the Chol-Chol Foundation studying the processes of a non-profit organization and more specifically, the Chol-Chol Foundation's work in promoting sustainable economic development for rural Mapuche weavers and artisans from the Araucania region in Chile.
I have chosen the Mapuche as the focus for this proposal because I believe that their struggle to maintain their culture within an advancing Chilean State to be important not only to the nation of Chile, but also to a grander and more general scale of indigenous-modern world relations.
About half of the Mapuche in Chile live in the Araucania region. Temuco is the urban center of this region and home to NGOs, educational and governmental institutions that interact with, document and influence Mapuche culture.