Narratives of the origin from modern national materiality: The process of creation of the Wenüfoye (Mapuche Flag) and its non-traditional proliferation

Abstract

In 1992, a part of the Mapuche people announced the results of a creative and concerted political process to design a novel object: the Wenüfoye (celestial cinnamon tree) or the Mapuche flag. The impact that Wenüfoye caused in Chilean public opinion, a section of the Mapuche territory from which this investigation was generated, produced several criticisms of several actors.
Despite the initial difficulties, the flag was a success, crowning itself as an indispensable object in contemporary Mapuche political manifestations. The present work exposes, from a revisión of written documentary sources,
the processes of creation of this object within the current Chilean territory, evaluating its particular place of insertion in the changing Mapuche material history of the twentieth century, arguing that much of the effects and conditions of possibility of Wenüfoye are related to a Mapuche modernity of the 20th century and not a previous foundation. The implications of this process not only illuminate part of the political agency of some objects in the struggles for
cultural difference, but also invite us to reflect on the role of object design in the decolonization process