Open Knowledge (FSC OK)

This article chronicles the long-standing conflict between the Mapuche people and the Chilean state since militarized colonization of Mapuche territory in the 1880s. The analysis focuses especially on a series of conflicts between Mapuche communities and Chilean-based multinational forest companies, which operate extensively in territory that the Mapuche claim. Given that state-initiated programs of restitution and reconciliation have been largely successful in addressing this problem, we ask whether a multi-stakeholder program of forest products certification might help overcome the impasse. We argue that this possibility does exist, but not because the certification program addresses root causes; paradoxically, the glimmer of hope comes from the implicit acknowledgement that Mapuche political horizons and Chilean designs on Mapuche territory are incommensurable. In this �privatized� scenario, certification becomes a tool for increasing Mapuche communities� power to bargain with the forest companies, offering �transactional� steps toward conflict resolution, based on strengthened practices of autonomy that neither seek nor expect deeper �ontological� reconciliation.