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1/5 November the 25th is the first Selk'nam Dignity Day, when the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego, long wrongly considered extinct, will demand restitution from the Chilean state that helped murder their ancestors. What does this have to do with NZ? Plenty, sadly.
2/5 The Selk'nam were able to survive on one of the wildest islands in the world. They developed a low-tech but ingenious material culture & an elaborate, beautiful symbolic culture. New Zealanders helped destroy that culture.
3/5 When the Beagle stopped at Tierra del Fuego, Darwin saw nearly naked Selk'nam walk across snow, & dive into freezing seas. He wondered whether they were human. If they were human, he said, they were more primitive than any other people. Darwin's words poisoned perceptions.
4/7 The Society for the Exploitation of Tierra del Fuego was an Anglo-Chilean company that set up huge sheep farms on the island from the end of the 19th C. They struggled to find suitable sheep & shepherds. Many NZers were recruited. The company's head was a NZer, Alick Cameron.
5/7 Selk'nam were in the way of the sheep farmers. Soon death squads were formed to clear the land of its indigenes. Hunters were paid a bounty for each corpse they collected. Selk'nam were massacred by the score.
6/7 Some Selk'nam were kidnapped & exhibited in northern hemisphere circuses. Selk'nam skulls were shipped to European universities. NZ shepherds were intimately involved in the genocide, which was perpetrated while NZer Cameron effectively controlled much of Tierra del Fuego.
7/8 Today NZ's role in Tierra del Fuego's history is remembered in toponyms, architecture, & local genealogies. This is the town of Cameron, which is named after the famous NZer. In the '20s & '30s NZ's link with TdF was well-known here. Our newspapers regularly celebrated it.
8/9 Today the Selk'nam are regrouping themselves, after the horrors of the 20th C, when ancestors who survived the death squads were imprisoned on bleak Dawson Island, & had their children stolen & adopted by white families. It is time for NZ to remember its role in a genocide.
9/9 I have a sad connection to the Selk'nam genocide. I have learned that my great-great-great uncle was Alexander MacLennan, aka the Red Pig, the most notorious 'Indian hunter' on Tierra del Fuego. MacLennan's evil deeds are described by Chatwin in his famous book In Patagonia.
