South America Projects
Through collaborative research with affected communities and specialists, we focus on how Indigenous in Walmapu, Chile, and Latin America are being recognized in the energy transition.
Trajectory
Our long-term case collaboration is with the Pilmaiken territory over a transnational hydropower conflict on Mapuche-Williche Indigenous lands in Chile. This brought three members of the team to Norway in May 2023 to observe and provide technical support for Mapuche-Williche leaders seeking to halt energy development on their sacred river. Dartmouth students conduct independent research as part of the Energy Justice Clinic with communities in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru.
Hydropower Conflict Involving Statkraft
Building on Professor Sarah Kelly's decade-long work with the Mapuche-Williche Indigenous community, we study an enduring conflict between Mapuche-Williche communities, a Norwegian state-owned renewable energy company, Statkraft, and the Chilean state. Working with Mapuche-Williche communities and an international network of collaborators, the Clinic has developed timelines of the conflict based on Indigenous perspectives of time according to non-linearity.
The Clinic has produced a report on the case, theorizing through the lens of energy justice, legal studies, and Indigenous sovereignty about the disruption of this Global North company on Indigenous cosmovisions and territorial relationships in the Global South. In an effort involving scholars from Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Norway, and the United States, we have analyzed how Statkraft is blatantly disregarding several of the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights and the International Labor Organization Convention 169.
Our research centers on how Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) is enacted in practice, which is a critical legal mechanism for Indigenous rights internationally. Through our collaborative research, we aim to decolonize what we consider legitimate practices of knowledge production. For example, to question what we mean by "energy", "justice" and "sovereignty" – and who consolidated such definitions in the first place. Such questioning opens up possibilities to validate, for instance, Indigenous cosmovisions that place nature as part of kinship relationshipsinstead of as natural resources. Therefore, it becomes feasible to support these historically marginalized communities to reclaim their narratives, territories, and ways of living.
Follow Our Work in Latin America