Resistance through presence: New research explores Indigenous land rights in Patagonia
For nearly 150 years, the Indigenous Mapuche people of northern Patagonia, Argentina, have continued to assert their rights to their ancestral lands in the face of dispossession and marginalisation. In a new doctoral thesis from the School of Global Studies, Philip Wade explores how Mapuche communities resist not only through protests and legal action, but also through quieter, sustained efforts to maintain their presence and sustain their knowledge.
What have you been investigating in your doctoral project?
“The project, which I’ve developed over the last five years, looks at the different strategies and practices of resistance that many Indigenous Mapuche people, and allied groups, in northern Patagonia (Argentina) utilise within a territorial conflict that has been ongoing since the 19th century. Beginning In 1878 the post-colonial state of Argentina invaded Mapuche land as a settler colonial project, to dispossess and murder Mapuche people in what has been named by numerous scholars as a genocide. This was done to take over their lands and replace them with European settlers. The genocidal invasion was never completed however, as the Mapuche remains, with many continuously insisting on their presence and their territorial rights.”
“The project aims its lens at the encounter between the structures of the settler state and Indigenous peoples. Particular attention is paid to two distinct types of land conflict, firstly over fracking, a particularly destructive type of oil and gas extraction, where territory is destroyed in order to extract resources, and secondly conflicts over national parks where people and livelihoods are often displaced in favour of an exclusive notion of environmental protection. In both cases Indigenous people are often disposed.”
What are the conclusions of your study?
“The primary conclusion is that despite the damage caused by these activities and the historic erasure of the Mapuche, many Mapuche groups continue to resist, building alliances and coalitions with diverse actors at different scales (local, national, international), with differing degrees of success. This resistance is not just direct actions of protests, sit ins etc. or even legal challenges, but is often a slow resistance over time that insists on Mapuche presence and knowledge. In this resistance by many Mapuche people is world-making, often articulating positive notions of alternative futures.”
How did you reach those conclusions?
“I conducted three periods of fieldwork between 2023 and 2025 totaling nine months in the provinces of Neuquen, RioNegro and Mendoza in Argentina. The study was ethnographically based and I worked with a number of civil society actors, members of movements and academic colleagues there to gather data and to learn as much about the place as possible. I also conducted semi structured interviews as life-histories, in order to learn about the place over time.”
Why is your research important?
“The research is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, there are number of states similar to Argentina, such as Sweden, that are historically settler-colonial and continue to discriminate against Indigenous peoples. The resistance of many Mapuche people, resonates in a number of diverse contexts. A piece of graffiti that I saw in Argentina ‘ayer aqui, hoy en palestina’ (yesterday here, today in Palestine), brings into sharp focus that the settler colonial genocide that was conducted against the Mapuche in the 19th century, reverberates today in Palestine, with the same logics of elimination and dispossession for the benefit of settlers playing out again in the genocide being perpetrated there.”
Philip Wade defended his doctoral thesis Cracks in the Desert: Hegemonic Space and Indigenous Resistance in the Borderlands of Northern Patagonia on 23 October 2026 at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg.
Abstract of the thesis is uploaded to the University of Gothenburg's database GUPEA: