From project to commitment: interculturality and inter-group agencies mapuche and public policies in university extension

Abstract

In this article, we present reflections on the work that Mapuche organizations, study groups and communities and members of the Universidad Nacional de Río Negro have been doing in relation to the extension project "Promotion, systematization and visibility of experiences in the transmission of the culture, memory and language of the Mapuche people in Viedma, Patagones and Bariloche as spaces for intercultural construction: Müley iñ mishawael kimün5". The project's main objective was to promote the participation of participants in Mapuzugun learning spaces and to make the importance and complexity of these processes visible within the University.
Based on this experience, we proposed first of all that participation implied not only learning the language, but also recovering and strengthening ties as a people.
This shows that linguistic revitalization is not only a technical process of learning a language, but also a social and spiritual process for the Mapuche people. This strengthening of ties was expressed in everyday circumstances but also in exceptional ones, particularly in the face of the aggression experienced by the Buenuleo community, a participant in the project, in the context of the territorial recovery they are carrying out. This situation mobilized the members of the project in the different localities from which they participate and constituted an important accompaniment for the lof.6 From this reading, the project was asked to convene university authorities to participate in a meeting to discuss the care needs of the children of the community. Faced with the lack of response from the authorities, we reflected on the limits of this experience to question the conception of the extensionist practice as a constituent of the university agency, from the line called critical extension.