This powerful and rare photograph shows a Selk’nam (Ona) woman carrying her child on her back, wrapped in a guanaco fur cloak. It was taken in Tierra del Fuego, at the southernmost tip of South America, where the Selk’nam people lived for thousands of years.
The Selk’nam, also known as the Ona, were indigenous to the island of Tierra del Fuego, shared today by Chile and Argentina. They were hunter-gatherers, living a nomadic life in extremely cold climates, relying on guanaco (a wild relative of the llama) for clothing and food. Their society was rich with oral traditions, elaborate rites of passage, and a worldview centered on harmony with the land.
The Selk’nam were victims of a brutal genocide in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially during European colonization and the gold rush era. Ranchers and settlers saw them as obstacles to development and often hunted them for bounties.
Missionaries attempted to “civilize” them by forcibly relocating survivors and assimilating them, leading to the loss of language and culture. By the mid-20th century, the Selk’nam people were functionally extinct as a distinct community.
This photograph remains one of the last surviving records of a people nearly erased by colonial violence. The mother’s and child’s expressions carry both the sorrow of loss and the strength of survival. Today, efforts to revive and preserve Selk’nam identity continue, challenging historical silence with cultural resilience.
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