Lessons from Fire: The Displaced Radiata Pine on Mapuche Homelands and the California Roots of Chile’s Climate Crisis

Over the past century, vast swathes of Chile’s biologically diverse temperate rainforest have been replaced with radiata pine monoculture as a direct result of exchanges with California that began during the mid-1800s, when Chile experienced a boom in wheat exports to meet the demand of California gold rush populations. Chile’s “green rush” of radiata pine has hastened the displacement of people and plants and has created a flammable landscape that acts synergistically with climate change to create larger wildfires and longer fire seasons. The work presented here is premised on the understanding that land is a living, storied site that reveals lessons for correcting our behavior. I draw on theoretical contributions from Native American and Indigenous studies to understand the lessons from fire and the importance of traditional ecological knowledges from Mapuche and California Native homelands in response to climate change.