04/06/2026
Come along for our final lecture of the year 💚
‘Claiming Space in the City: Mapuche Organising and Urban Struggles’ by Dana Brablecova examines Indigenous-Mapuche organising in Santiago de Chile in the context of the increasing urbanisation of Indigenous peoples worldwide.
📍 REC A1.02
🗓️ 15 June
🕦 17:30
As Indigenous populations are becoming predominantly urban, understanding how indigeneity is organised, enacted, and contested in cities has become increasingly important. The Mapuche case offers a particularly illustrative example of these broader dynamics. Drawing on ethnographic research, the presentation focuses on how Mapuche groups develop collective activities-such as ceremonies, workshops, and community events-and how struggles over space emerge through these practices. These activities require stable or recurrent access to urban spaces and function not only as cultural expressions but also as organisational strategies that challenge exclusion and negotiate visibility within the city.
The presentation shows that spatial struggles arise as Mapuche organisations seek to secure, occupy, or symbolically appropriate space in a context shaped by bureaucratic constraints and unequal power relations. By linking everyday organising practices to broader spatial claims, the analysis highlights how Mapuche groups actively reconfigure urban space and produce new forms of belonging and urban indigeneity.
Dm us for more info! See you there 🍀
