The Kawésqar Territory extends into the Macrozone of Patagonian Fjords and Channels . From the Taitao Peninsula in the north, to the Brecknock Peninsula in the south.
kawésqarTerritory
Taitao
Brecknock
Kawésqar
Yagán
Where does this statement come from?
From the written account of European explorers and navigators from the 16th century and the
Archaeological evidence
of the Kawésqar culture
From 1520, when the famous Strait of Magellan, would finally connect to the west to cross the American continent, the first expedition of Europeans to dare to circumnavigate the globe, according to history. This would also be the first contact of the native hunter-gatherers and nomadic canoeists of the south. with civilized visitors and later with the new inhabitants of the territory who witnessed for more than 6,000 the development of primitive humans who explored, with their bark or trunk boats, the coasts of fjords and channels, islands or islets of this southern region .
The literature of these last five centuries, of European sailors, narrates these encounters and especially from what point to the other of the geography they used to run into the natives of the canoes and with astonishing regularity, which was decreasing into the twentieth century, moment the culmination of this nomadic settlement of the territory, and the beginning of its final settlement in the populations surrounding the ancestral navigation zones.
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While this was happening, the scientific uprising of Chilean and foreign anthropologists and archaeologists began that has made it possible to establish almost exactly the antiquity of human occupation of the canoe hunter-gatherers in the canals of western Patagonia. The human remains found on different islands and inland coasts, of naturally mummified bodies, as well as the cultural pattern of accumulating mythilid shells specially kept between the layers of the soil and the wide dispersion of these sites with organic remains when feeding while they moved from a point to point, the hunter-gatherers of the channels, from approximately 6,500 years before the present.
The self-recognition of Kawésqar Wæs (ancestral territory) keeps indigenous communities alert about the protection of their natural heritage, the conservation of their ecosystems, the co-administration with the status of their protected areas, threats to the environment and the The loss of the cultural elements that they have inherited directly from their elders and the legacy that they have passed on to the new generations of Kawésqar, keeps alive the fire of the canos and the smoke of the huts that centuries ago the curious Europeans saw for the first time.
The Kawésqar territory in surface area is equivalent to Uruguay in South America, a little less than Cambodia in Asia, a little more than Tunisia in Africa, or much more than all of Greece in Europe. Twice the United Arab Emirates, three times Costa Rica and four times Switzerland.
170.000 Km2
The Kawésqar Wæs Protected Wilderness Areas
This extensive Kawésqar territory covers an area of approximately 170,000 square kilometers, which represents 22% of the national territory, here Chile extends through the National System of Protected Wild Areas, the conservation area on a large scale, therefore we invite you to review the 7 units within Kawésqar territory.
