Traditionally, the Selk’nam or Ona people were nomads who lived by hunting and gathering on the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego (southernmost end of South America). For centuries, they had brief encounters with Westerners who visited the coasts of the island. However, cultural interactions became more intense in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Argentina and Chile sought to consolidate their sovereignty, and entrepreneurs decided to exploit natural resources (Martinic 1973; Belza 1974, 1975; Borrero 2001). Within this context, some voices were raised expressing concern about the fate of the Selk’nams. The establishment of gold washings and sheep-farming ‘estancias’ unleashed numerous conflicts. Even though Nuestra Señora de La Candelaria, a Salesian mission in Río Grande (Argentina), sought to ‘reduce’ the Selk’nams with an aim to integrate them into a new social order, many indigenous people found death at the institution – mainly as a result of infectious diseases (Guichón et al. 2006, 2017; Casali 2011).
By the mid-twentieth century, the Selk’nam population had decreased significantly. From that moment on until recently, the media and the academic world spoke of ‘extinction,’ spreading news from time to time about the identity of the survivors. There always seemed to be a ‘last ona’ who had gone previously unnoticed (Méndez 2012; Peñaloza 2016). Some years ago, some began to recognise themselves as Selk’nams. They claimed their ancestors had been the victims of a ‘genocide,’ but they also stressed that the ‘extinction’ had not been real (Badenes 2016). Indigenous people had always been there, even though they had preferred to remain silent to avoid stigmatisation. In the 1990s, the Selk’nams began to organise themselves. Moreover, they demanded their constitutional rights to be respected, including the return of their ancestors’ remains to Tierra del Fuego.
The subject of death has been always present in cultural studies surrounding the Selk’nams. The first systematic records were produced as a means to preserve information about practices which were thought to be doomed to oblivion. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, researchers and other Westerners made written and photographic surveys, and occasionally drew together large collections of objects to shed light on the material world of the Selk’nams (Gallardo 1910; Beauvoir 1915; Gusinde 1982). Human remains were not beyond their reach, and some skeletons were taken to museums to study human diversity (under a racial paradigm) (Gusinde 1951). As time went by, different projects attempted to study the impact that the modern world had on the Selk’nams. However, few researchers sought to discuss how Selk’nam people had traditionally understood death, and how these understandings could have changed over time.
My own research on the subject began when I started working with a group of bioarchaeologists (led by Riardo Guichón) who were interested in studying health in the context of La Candelaria. Between 1897 and 1947, more than 340 people were buried at the mission cemetery. Almost two thirds of the burials corresponded to indigenous people, while the rest included members of the religious community and other settlers (Salerno et al. 2016; Salerno & Guichón 2017). Fieldwork focused on the cemetery. Counting on the support of local groups, 33 bodies were recovered and taken to research facilities in the Province of Buenos Aires for further study. Bioarchaeological analyses led researchers to discuss the impact of tuberculosis on the indigenous population of the mission (Guichón et al. 2006, 2017; García Laborde et al. 2010).
Some time later the project decided to move beyond its original purpose by studying the disposition of the bodies. Considering my experience in historical archaeology, I developed a new line of enquiry focused on mortuary practices. Even though my research took into account multiple social actors, my attention was placed on the Selk’nams. At the beginning, I did not consider the possibility of studying what I later understood as the ‘landscapes of death’ among these people. My intention was to discuss how the mortuary practices involving the Selk’nam deceased and their survivors (within the framework of undeniable relationships with other social actors) could have helped (re)produce certain aspects of the cemetery space (Salerno et al. 2016; Salerno & Guichón 2017).
However, during my research it became clear that in order to understand what had happened at the cemetery, it was necessary to go beyond its limits. At first, I decided to broaden the spatial scale of my work, considering practices that – while connected to the burials – indigenous people could have carried out in other spaces of the mission or outside the institution. Later I thought it convenient to broaden the timescale of my research in an attempt to provide some sort of historical sense to the aforementioned practices. Therefore, I started reading ethnohistorical records trying to understand the relationship between the deceased and their survivors in Selk’nam tradition (Salerno & Rigone 2017). The preparation of the remains recovered at the cemetery for their return to Tierra del Fuego and eventual restitution to the Selk’nam Community (in the case of the individuals genetically identified as Native Americans) opened up new questions regarding their final disposition (Guichón et al. 2015).
Only then did I become aware of the relevance that the spatial dimension of certain practices could have had in the cultural understanding of death among the Selk’nams. Moreover, I had a chance to perceive that the spatial dimension of these practices could have undergone changes over time. Following this perception, one of the goals of this chapter is to explore the features defining the landscapes of death among the Selk’nams. In particular, I am interested in discussing the flows and tensions between places and mobilities, and memory and forgetting, all while considering the practices that (re)produce relations of proximity/distance between the dead and their survivors.
The chapter does not follow a chronological sequence conforming to Selk’nam history (even though it involves a multi-temporal analysis and the re-ordering of historical processes in the Final Words). On the contrary, it follows the changes in the landscapes of my research. Therefore, after presenting some concepts that I find to be relevant, I will consider the landscapes of death within the context of 1) La Candelaria mission, 2) the Selk’nam tradition, and 3) the current discussions surrounding the restitution of Selk’nam remains. This sequence allows me to discuss the places and movements of my impressions and interpretations, and the specific way each context challenged me and made me think about the others. Considering this, I also attempt to critically reflect on my own work and assumptions.
The notion of landscape has been understood in multiple ways. Taking up elements of different proposals, here I define the landscape as the way in which people understand and engage with space – not as an abstract container, but as an array of material elements including topographical features, buildings, objects, etc. (Thomas 1996; Ingold 2000; Bender 2001). Considering that our being-in-the-world is corporeal, an important part of our engagement with the landscape is intertwined with bodily practices and experiences (Tilley 1994). There is not a single way of dealing with the landscape, but multiple sociocultural understandings. Furthermore, landscapes do not represent static realities, but ever-changing processes responding to historical contingencies (Bender 1993, 1998).
In this chapter I focus on the relationship between landscape and death, considering that death may become a focus of extreme concern under certain historical circumstances and that the decision of studying the connection between both of these terms can provide insight into some aspects of the spatial dimension of death that would otherwise go unnoticed. The idea of the landscapes of death is not new. While some authors have associated them with theaters of conflict where death has affected large segments of a population (as in the case of wars, epidemics, etc.), some others have focused on specific places whose materiality has been devoted to the disposition and memory of the deceased (necropolis, memorials, etc.) (Dov Kulka 2013; Hannum & Rhodes 2018).
My research took up some elements of previous definitions, as it stemmed from the analysis of a historical context (a religious mission) where the death of the Selk’nams not only became massive, but also materialised in a cemetery. Notwithstanding this, here I understand the landscapes of death in a broader sense, as the ways in which people grasp the surrounding space within the framework of death-related practices and experiences. Death as a cultural process can take various forms. It may begin in the moments before clinical death, and it may go far beyond that (Martínez 2013). In this chapter I focus on the spatial dimension of the practices and experiences connected with the disposition of the bodies and mourning, stressing the relationship between the deceased and the survivors.
At the level of landscape, the disposition of the bodies and mourning might involve places and mobilities. These are concepts in tension and dialogue. On the one hand, places are the result of focusing on certain spaces within more extensive horizons (Bender 2001). On the other, mobility requires the deployment of horizons as well as broader spatial scales (Ingold 1997, 2000). Thanks to movement it is possible to leave behind a certain place and engage with another, while places can be thought of as stopping points within the framework of movement. Death-related dynamics of place and mobilities can be varied. For instance, the disposition of the bodies can be carried out at the same place of death, or imply the transport of the bodies to new locations which can be revisited or not by the survivors.
Death-related dynamics of place and mobility are associated with the cultural forms that mobility (in a general sense) takes up in a given group. La Candelaria mission intended to show the Selk’nams the virtues of sedentism. However, missionary documents recorded abundant entries and exits, which were either resisted or tolerated by the religious community (Marschoff & Salerno 2016; Salerno & Marschoff 2017). As mentioned before, the Selk’nams were traditionally nomadic. At present, people who recognise themselves as Selk’nams relate to the landscape in a variety of ways – as it is with any other group of contemporary society showing diversity in people’s life contexts and occupations.
The material forms that the disposition of the bodies and mourning can take maintain close ties with the practical senses associated with the memory and forgetting of the deceased, (re)producing relations of proximity or distance between the dead and their survivors (Salerno & Rigone 2017). Just as place and mobility, and memory and forgetting, are terms in tension and dialogue (Buchli & Lucas 2001). To remember is to focus on the past in the present. However, it is only possible to remember certain things to the extent that some others are forgotten (Ricoeur 2004). Memory and forgetting are not inherently positive or negative, but their value needs to be evaluated in context (Weinrich 2004). Survivors can resort to the potential of the material world to recall the dead or erase their traces to cope with mourning. However, some groups may try to erase the material traces of other people’s dead to delete them from history (Salerno & Zarankin 2015).
Even though I have raised these issues at the beginning of the chapter, they were only strengthened as I developed my research. My reflection on historical and archaeological evidence allowed me to defy certain assumptions that I had accepted before the beginning of the work or during certain moments of the investigation (for instance, an emphasis on place at the expense of mobility, or vice versa). In the following sections, I present the course of my research. I believe that, only after traversing certain places and movements, I could not only broaden the landscapes of my thoughts, but also grasp some elements of the changing landscapes of death among the Selk’nams.
As mentioned earlier, my research initially focused on La Candelaria, discussing how the mortuary practices that involved the Selk’nam deceased and their survivors could have (re)produced certain aspects of the cemetery space (Salerno et al. 2016; Salerno & Guichón 2017). Thus, and without fully intending to, I ended up circumscribing mortuary practices to a place understood in a particular way; in other words, as a self-contained space, associated with routine activities, and capable of (re)producing a sense of identity and memory. The association between death and this idea of place was probably the result of different assumptions (some of which had been naturalised during my professional training):
When I first visited the cemetery, I felt surprised. Most of the space within the perimeter walls had no visible signs which could be attributed to burials. Furthermore, the few structures and gravestones still standing were associated with members of the religious community and other settlers who had died between the 1920s and the 1950s, rather than with indigenous people (Salerno & Guichón 2017). More than bound to memory, the cemetery appeared to be a slightly forgotten place. The general condition of the graveyard accounted for these circumstances. There were fallen sections of the perimeter wall and no indication of a well-maintained path leading to the cemetery. This did not seem to have a relationship with the declaration of the cemetery as a national historical monument. Such a declaration had not been enough to protect the graveyard nor to make some people associate it with identity and memory.
I started wondering which practices could have been the product or producers of the cemetery over time (Salerno & Guichón 2016). I looked for answers in the practices of the religious community and the other settlers, but I especially focused on the Selk’nams. Missionary documents did not explicitly refer to the existence of significant grave markings until the 1920s. Before that date (when most deaths corresponded with indigenous people), only wooden crosses had been apparently placed over the head of some burials (Beauvoir 1915). By the 1920s, the cemetery practically lacked grave markings, making it difficult to recognise who had been buried where (Gusinde 1920a). Following some references, the cemetery had been unsystematically excavated by Westerners looking for the remains of indigenous people (Gusinde 1920b). Some of these remains could have been taken/sold to museums (Gusinde 1951).
These circumstances seemed to change between the 1920s and the 1940s when the indigenous population of the mission decreased, and the number of settlers buried at the cemetery became larger. At that moment, missionary documents claimed that some structures and gravestones had been placed to mark new burials. However, it is possible that the structures associated with indigenous people could have been different to those associated with settlers; the first ones being made of wood, and the latter of metal, concrete, and marble. As time went by, wooden structures could have been affected by weather conditions, but also by an extreme remodelling of the cemetery that took place between the 1970s and the 1980s. This remodelling only left standing those structures made of metal, concrete, and marble.
More clues were eventually found in missionary documents. For the members of the religious community, the material presence of the cemetery was necessary to maintain the ties between the deceased and their survivors. When a death occurred, the priests insisted on asking Selk’nam people to accompany the body to the cemetery. The same thing was done every 2 November, a day in memory of the dead. Even though the deceased had to be remembered, the Salesians emphasised that mourning should not last too long, as indigenous people had to trust in the existence of a better life in the hereafter. At the mission, the observance of some Christian principles could have been respected (or at least, that was what some priests wanted to stress).
However, in the stories surrounding the first deaths of Selk’nam people in the institution, there are mentions of practices associated with the disposition of the dead or mourning that are obviously different. There is a description of an indigenous man trying to run away with the body of his son (Beauvoir 1915). On several occasions, the death of one or more persons was followed by the decision of some indigenous people to leave the mission for mourning (after trying to burn down the house and the artefacts of the deceased). Some references indicate that, at the mission, some indigenous people painted their bodies, cut their hair, and performed lamentations and self-flagellation during mourning (Fernández 2014). Finally, some documents suggest that, as time went by, some Selk’nams started associating La Candelaria with death and decided to avoid it (Gusinde 1982).
Although I had initially focused on the cemetery as a place having unequivocal senses, the evidence made me pose new questions. Could the cemetery effectively operate as a place of identity and memory for all the Selk’nams? Could some people not identify themselves with the cemetery, or understand it as a place to be avoided or forgotten? Could some indigenous practices be related to the (re)production of some sort of material distance between the dead and their survivors? The landscapes of death eventually took me out of the cemetery and to consider Selk’nam tradition.
Following ethnohistorical sources, when a Selk’nam felt about to die, she or he decided to rest in her or his tent (Gusinde 1982). In the moments before death, the members of the group surrounded the dying person, limiting their mutual interaction to a ‘hidden or veiled attention’ (Salerno & Rigone 2017). The imminence of death produced a general state of excitement. The dead body was prepared some hours later. The body was not painted or dressed in a particular way. The guanaco skin that the person had worn in life was spread out on the floor, and the body was placed on the skin together with some twigs to facilitate transportation. Finally, the body was wrapped in the skin, and bound with leather straps (Gusinde 1982).
The burial was not carried out where death had occurred. A group usually made up of men took the body to a location which they deemed appropriate for the inhumation. The Selk’nams resorted to individual burials but not to cemeteries. Those who acted as ‘undertakers’ were obliged to remain silent about the location of the grave. They had to erase any signs of it, and even their own footprints so no one could follow their path (Gusinde 1982).
While the ‘undertakers’ carried out their duty, those who remained at the camp devoted themselves to burning all things that once had been used by the deceased. Survivors wanted to remove everything that could trigger the memory of the dead (Gusinde 1982). Finally, the group abandoned the place where death had occurred and resumed the cycle of mobility. The men who had acted as ‘undertakers’ did their best to keep the group at a proper distance from the burial. Some time later, some of them secretly returned to the grave to check if it remained hidden (Gusinde 1982). The Selk’nams were horrified by human remains, and when they found them they felt the urge to rebury them and clean themselves immediately (Gallardo 1910).
The Selk’nams understood mourning as an extended and particularly anguishing moment. The practices of mourning demanded the survivors to attend to their bodies in particular ways (Salerno & Rigone 2017). Firstly, they painted themselves with certain colours and designs. Secondly, they cut their hair, creating a tonsure. Thirdly, the relatives performed lamentations at different times of day. Fourthly, during these lamentations, some people scratched or cut their own bodies with rocks or shells, occasionally drawing motifs on their skin with blood (Gusinde 1982).
The archaeological work at the mission sought to study the sociocultural context of that institution and some aspects of the Selk’nam tradition. But it also required maintaining a relationship with the Selk’nam people who still live in Tierra del Fuego. As mentioned earlier, some time ago a number of people began to openly recognise themselves as Selk’nams (Méndez 2012). Following the words of a Community leader,
The research project counted on the support of the Rafaela Ishton Community, some members of which had their ancestors buried at the mission. This Community was granted juridical status and obtained a provincial law granting them communal lands in the rural area of Tolhuin, Department of Río Grande. The Community also requested that the human remains of Selk’nam people, which were in the hands of the Museum of Natural Sciences of La Plata (Buenos Aires Province), were restituted in compliance with Ley Nacional 25,517 (National Law 25,517). Even though negotiations took some time, the remains eventually returned to Tierra del Fuego after more than 100 years.
The archaeological work at the mission cemetery, as well as the moving of the bodies to Buenos Aires for further analysis, distanced the remains from Río Grande. At present, the research project is organising the return of the bodies to the heritage authorities of Tierra del Fuego. Following Ley Nacional 25,517 (2001), ‘The mortal remains of aboriginal people … that are part of museums and/or public or private collections, should be made available to the indigenous people and/or communities of origin that request them.’ With an aim to fulfill legal and ethical responsibilities, after or together with the return of the remains to the provincial authorities, the bodies identified as Native Americans will be restituted to the indigenous Community.
Considering my interest in the landscapes of death, I started wondering about the final destination that contemporary Selk’nams will choose for the bodies. Will they resort to the old mortuary traditions, burying the bodies at secret locations in the lands that the Community was granted (as did other indigenous groups in South America)? Will they prefer to leave the bodies at the mission cemetery, where they had rested for decades? Will they resort to another option, not necessarily based on ancestral tradition or missionary practices? Even though Selk’nam people have not yet reached a decision, some details concerning the restitution of the remains kept by the Museum of La Plata could provide relevant information.
In 2014, the members of the Rafaela Ishton Community and the research project participated in a series of informal meetings to reflect on the possible destination of the bodies that had been exhumed at the mission (Guichón et al. 2015). Considering previous experiences involving other indigenous communities, the meeting considered the possibility of creating a temporary reservoir for human remains. The restitution of the bodies once kept by the Museum of La Plata was delayed until 2016 as the Community could not reach a decision whether to take them to Ushuaia, the city of Río Grande, or Tolhuin. Finally, the Community brought them to the communal lands, with a view of building a mausoleum. A Selk’nam leader pointed out: ‘In the same place that these Onas rest, we will place some other brothers that we will bring from different parts of the country, and the world, so they could finally rest in their land’ (Maldonado in Télam, 21 April 2016).
The landscapes of death that presently involve the bodies of ancient Selk’nams frequently imply exhumations, the transport of remains out of Tierra del Fuego, research facilities, the return and restitution of the bodies, community decisions regarding their final destination, etc. Statements surrounding the restitution of the bodies previously kept by the Museum of La Plata indicated that they would be preserved in a mausoleum or a space for memory. This would be different from the traditional form of disposing of the dead among the Selk’nams, as ancient practices defied the senses of identity and memory that are now attached to collective mausoleums. However, unlike the mission cemetery, a mausoleum could effectively mobilise both of these notions. The decision to create a space for memory could be connected with a world tendency that has allowed minorities subjected to massacres, genocides, and discrimination to recover visibility and their own voices after years of marginalisation (Salerno & Zarankin 2015).
In Selk’nam tradition, the landscape of death was bound to a general form of mobility. Since death found a group in different points, the disposal of the dead did not occur in a single location. The moving of the body created a distinction between the places and journeys ‘of life,’ known to all the members of the group, and the places and journeys ‘of death,’ only known to the ‘undertakers.’ Both realities were eventually combined, as the ‘undertakers’ defined certain aspects of the cycle of mobility in order to avoid the spaces of death. Secrecy surrounding the burials prevented these places from being associated with senses of identity or memory. The decision to abandon the camp, the practice of burning the things the deceased used, etc., strengthened the material distance from death. This was considered relevant to break the constant recall that prevented people from closing mourning. In the long term, the places of burial became lost in the landscape, and the memory of single actors fused into the horizon of the ancestors.
The mission attempted to create another landscape of death, connected with the principles of Christian and modern thought. Under the project of the Salesian Congregation, the cemetery was transformed into a place capable of gathering the community of Christians. At the same time, it was associated with notions of identity and memory, stressing the possibility of maintaining a material relationship with the dead. However, while most of the Selk’nams tolerated burying the deceased at the cemetery, many of them could have maintained traditional mourning practices. This made them abandon temporarily or permanently the mission, having an impact on the decline of the institution (without denying the effect of infectious diseases).
Today the situation is different. Unlike the mission context, where the destination of the bodies seemed to be controlled by the members of the religious community, the people who recognise themselves as Selk’nams discuss what they will do with the remains of their ancestors. As empowered actors, the opportunities that open up before them are numerous; and they could resort to certain elements of Selk’nam tradition, recent history, and/or the community’s present understanding of death (considering that they are part of an inter-cultural society).
Regarding my own understanding on the landscapes of death, the research confronted me with a changing array of places and mobilities. Starting with La Candelaria, I initially emphasised a notion of place, conceived of as a fixed category and associated with unequivocal senses of identity and memory. Following some practices made me go beyond the institution and reach a series of places and mobilities that I had not considered earlier. Approaching Selk’nam tradition was relevant to understanding what had happened at the mission. Thus, I had the chance to explore a different context, where mobilities gained strength, and the places connected with death accounted for different senses, attempting to reinforce – at least to some extent – distance and forgetting.
Reflecting on the present was part of the research project agenda and allowed me to close the temporal exercise. The new landscape of death involved different places and mobilities. But the possible final destination of the remains made me think of the relevance that certain places, associated with senses of identity and memory, can have for contemporary groups. All of this, despite of the past and the interests that we, as researchers, can have in overcoming what we sometimes understand as fixed categories (Caftanzoglou 2001).
I would like to thank the Multidisciplinary Institute of History and Human Sciences, of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (IMHICIHU-CONICET, Argentina), Ricardo Guichón (director of the research project at La Candelaria), Romina Rigone, the other members of the team, and the Selk’nam Community Rafaela Ishton. The ideas presented here are my sole responsibility.
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