Back to the Land: Museum Practices, Collections, and Other‐Than‐Human Politics in Southern Chile

Since the 2000s, Mapuche communities' participation has transformed the Mapuche Museum of Cañete. This participation shifted the institution's concept, curation, and conservation practices. From the second half of the 2010s onwards, other‐than‐human politics reshaped the participatory process. Demanding their release from the colonial captivity they were subjected to, other‐than‐humans challenged the conception of things‐as‐heritage, objects belonging to the Chilean State, and demanded de‐patrimonialization, repatriation, and reburial. Making the recalcitrant image of things‐as‐lives apparent, other‐than‐humans required respect. They both stressed the museum practices that turned them into objects and brought to the fore the complexities of the colonial condition that encapsulate their lives. This paper is an ethnographic essay on what should not count as collection and how the Mapuche modes of existence exceed the Chilean heritage regime of objectification. Thus, it requires rethinking repatriation as other‐than‐human politics.