ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship between two phenomena in the history of the Mapuche, the people indigenous to much of what is southern Chile and Argentina. It focuses on the practical value of exploring the issues to further both language revitalisation and conflict resolution. The chapter aims to understand language revitalisation to mean “bring[ing] endangered languages back to some level of use within their communities after a period of reduction in usage”. It proposes a crude heuristic: that language revitalisation may vary between two extremes: “shallow” and “deep”. The autonomy movement needs to be considered in relation to language revitalisation, since proposals for autonomy are founded on ethnic difference, and language plays a role in constructing that ethnic difference. The chapter suggests that some perspectives with which to think about the relationship between language revitalisation and conflict in the Mapuche context.
