'The Settlers' depicts genocide of Chile's Indigenous people

Chilean director Felipe Galvez's feature film debut, "The Settlers," or "Los colonos" in Spanish, tells a brutal story. Set in 1893, it follows three horsemen on an expedition in Chile's southernmost region, the Patagonian archipelago of Tierra del Fuego. The three men, a young Chilean native, an American mercenary, and a reckless British lieutenant, are hired by a wealthy landowner to delimit and reclaim the land that the state has given him.

The men murder Indigenous people from the Selk'nam tribe — nomads who survive by hunting the colonizers' sheep. The Indigenous tribe members fight back, and a struggle ensues against the remote region's breathtaking mountain landscape.

Taking on racism in film

Galvez's movie sheds light on this period of violence in Chilean history— and a genocide that went nearly unnoticed by the rest of the world.

"It's a film that tells of the past but reaches into the present and reflects events that are happening today," the director said in an interview with German public broadcaster ARD.

One might be tempted to classify "The Settlers" as a "Western" film, but Galvez said he does not want it to be viewed as such. He called the genre in the 20th century an "active accomplice to the colonization process in the Americas."

"The Western was a  propaganda genre that justified the slaughter of Indigenous peoples," Galvez said, adding that by turning murder into entertainment and portraying Indigenous peoples as villains "it was extremely racist." 

Hard truths

The first Europeans reached Tierra del Fuego when the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the world for Spain in 1520. He named the archipelago at the southern tip of the continent "Land of Smoke" — a name later changed to "Land of Fire," likely because of the many campfires lit by Indigenous people along the coast. The Selk'nam, also known as the Ona or Onawo people, were one of four indigenous tribes living in the area when the first Europeans arrived during this period.

Yet the Selk'nam, estimated to number about 4,000 in the last 1800s, had little contact with ethnic Europeans until settlers from Argentina, Chile and Europe arrived in the Tierra del Fuego around 1850. The sheep breeders, gold prospectors and farmers brought death to these Indigenous peoples, first through diseases they carried with them. Then by openly persecuting the tribes. The ancestral hunting land of the Selk'nam was turned into large ranches, and the Selk'nam, having no concept of private property, hunted the sheep farmed there, believing them to be fair game.

Ranchers began to retaliate with the support of the Argentinian and Chilean governments, hiring bounty hunters to kill Selk'nam. This led to the tribe's almost complete demise.

A lack of information today

The Selk'nam most probably arrived in Patagonia around 10,000 years ago. Like the other Indigenous peoples in the area, they defied the adverse living conditions of the archipelago's polar climate of blazing sun and Antarctic cold. They lived in small communities throughout the barren region.

The nomadic group did not build cities or leave behind monuments. Nor did they leave behind many artifacts — or any written language. It's mainly through historical photos and research reports written by individuals, such as missionary Martin Gusinde (1886-1969), that we know about their culture today.

Gusinde was sent to Chile by the Steyler Missionaries, a religious order within the Roman Catholic Church also known as the Society of the Divine Word. The Austrian priest and anthropologist undertook four research trips between 1918 and 1924 to document the life of the indigenous communities in the Tierra del Fuego.

Gusinde's photos, which show people participating in ceremonies and rituals, are now kept by the Anthropos Institute of the Steyler Missionaries in Sankt Augustin, Germany. "Gusinde was one of the first ethnologists who sought direct contact with the people he was studying," Anthropos Institute librarian Harald Grauer told DW in an interview.

Sold to 'human zoos'

Some Selk'nam were deported to Europe and paraded in "human zoos." As early as the 15th century, people were kidnapped in colonized areas and brought to Europe for show as "exotic" people. Such zoos were used to demonstrate the supposed "superiority" of European civilization.

By the 19th century, it had become a lucrative business, and Hamburg's Hagenbeck Zoo was the European leader in the human exhibition business. According to Hamburg colonialism researcher Jürgen Zimmerer, this dark page of European history still has not been properly addressed.

In September 2023, Chile's National Congress officially recognized the Selk'nam as one of the 11 original peoples of Chile. Their story is told in "The Settlers," which is out in German cinemas on February 15.

This article was translated from German.