The sea, like the sky, holds a mystery that draws us in. And when I think of the sea, I think of the most intimate origin: the maternal womb. We all come from there, wrapped in water, breathing through our mothers, floating as if we carried an ocean within us. The sea is that first territory we share as humanity.

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That is why, for my Kawésqar people, the sea is not just a space for work: it is life, memory, and encounter. But that bond was broken by colonial trauma. Colonial trauma began with the violence of colonization: they took our territory, silenced our language, and made us feel fear and shame for who we were. The genocide did not only kill people: it attempted to kill our memory.

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That pain did not end in the past. It became a living wound, with consequences in the descendants. In my own case, I recognize it in things like ADHD: the difficulty of concentrating, the feeling of being unable to express what I perfectly understand in my heart. I also recognize it in the bullying that our children still endure at school, often even from teachers themselves, as if they still wanted to convince us that we are worthless.

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Colonial trauma manifests itself in mental health, in the loss of language, in the impossibility of freely traveling through the channels our grandparents once navigated without fear, in the alcoholism that numbs the pain of mistreatment, and in the distance from loved ones for insisting on speaking a language.

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But I have also discovered that, just as we inherit the wounds, we inherit the gifts. Our grandparents left us strength, resilience, and the ability to live in harmony with nature. That is why I sing, I write, and I sail: to show that we are not a museum, we are living memory.

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My dream is that we heal this trauma collectively, that Chile recognizes the true history of its Indigenous peoples and teaches it in schools, and that one day we can proudly say: “We survived the plunder, and we are still here, more alive than ever.”

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That is why we, as a Foundation, are working tirelessly for the restitution of our ancestors. It is a request from them, transmitted in dreams, that has guided every step we have taken. We do this to uplift our history and sustain our resistance: the same resistance that has allowed the Kawésqar people to remain alive for more than 7,000 years.

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We may not see them, but we hear them… and we follow their messages. Because in each of those messages lies the memory that sustains us, the justice we demand, and the dignity we will never again allow to be taken from us.