Hatitelen: the Strait of Magellan in the Selk'nam language; 

Onashaga: the Beagle channel in Yagan; 

Klawelk: Cape San Diego in Haush. 

These three examples of place names are the result of archival research, field recompilation, classification and preservation of cultural data in collaboration with members of these peoples. This multidisciplinary approach to modelling and rebuilding historical cultural heritage was initiated following the results of a first field expedition carried out in 2013 for several months (Lemasson 2019 and 2021). The discovery of the multitude of places converted into spaces, as well as the meeting with several informants of these peoples, have generated a long-term project of reconstitution of maps prior to colonization. This project integrates various methods of reconstitutions of selk'nam, haush and yagan toponymies used to create databases designed with and for these peoples.

Despite a clear desire to exterminate these peoples in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the heirs of this history today carry the message of their resistance to official histories manipulated in favor of the settlers and to the very denial of their existence and identity for nearly a century (Comisión Verdad Histórica 2008). The collective memory testifies to these events and the map corroborates it by becoming a medium of choice to make visible the movements (deportations, captures, concentration camps, mass killings, linked maritime traffic, financial movements, etc.). As Joel Bonnemaison points out “The ethnic group is created and reinforced by the depth of its anchorage to the ground, and by the degree of correspondence more or less elaborate that it maintains with a space that it structures, quadrille and polarises according to its own purposes and symbolic representations.” (Bonnemaison 1981: 254). In the midst of a process of heritage reconstruction, the contribution of toponymy and, more generally, Geographical Information Systems for the visualization of past events is an important resource and helps to restore its place to collective memory and meaning to places that have lost their names, their meanings and the whole sensitive dimension that they contained “before”. In short, to find the link and to help its development between the current inhabitants of these regions and the recent past of these territories become spaces.

The current toponymic vacuum of the island of Terre de Feu and its neighbors further south illustrates a rapid and bloody colonization of these territories. Analysis of official data shows, for example, that the few remaining Selk'nam-language place names are in areas that served as refuges for these populations during the genocide. Situated in mountainous areas for selk'nam, they correspond to land where sheep farming could not be developed and where selk'nam could try to survive by hiding, escaping headhunters paid by landowners further north (Penazzo 1995). Others survived by adopting the lifestyle of the settlers, by prostituting themselves (Bascopé 2011), working in estancias such as those of Viamonte and Harberton (Bridges 1952; Chapman 2008; Bascopé 2009), or staying in more preserved areas such as around Cape San Pablo (Casali / Manzi 2017). Victims of colonization and unrecognized genocides in all their amplies (Comisión Verdad Histórica 2008), the descendants of those who were able to survive still coexist today with place names imposed by the winners of this process of territorial and cultural dispossession. Names of murderers and accomplices of the selk'nam, haush and/or yagan genocides are still in force in the current official place name, in Argentina as in Chile. To name but a few of the best known: Julio Popper, Alexander MacLennan, José Menéndez, Mauricio Braun and Julio Argentino Roca (Departamento de Cartografía et al. 2000; Rosenblitt Berdichesky / Sanhueza / Sagredo Baeza 2010). The analysis of the toponymic catalogues shows that, to date, less than 8% of the toponyms used for the publication of official maps in Argentina and Chile are of indigenous origin.

These databases were mainly created from some fifty bibliographic sources scattered geographically (cf. bibliography listing the main ones) and thanks to the participation of members of the peoples concerned. To the extent possible, each place is associated with the informant and the date of acquisition of the information, the current name, the GPS position, the meaning of the name and/or historical references, its integration or not in the cosmovision of these peoples, and the traditional territorial classification known as haruwen for selk'nam (Gusinde 1982; Wilson 1999) and haush. To maximize the chances of understanding the intrinsic logic of the classification of places, their uses (e.g., symbolic or functional) and their contexts (Kaplan / Kaplan 1989: 19), this information can be analysed according to several categories and keywords. These databases now include more than 1500 selk'nam toponyms, more than 400 yagan and several tens haush.

The desert illustrated by the official Chilean and Argentinian maps makes that very often the places compiled in this database are not referenced or named. Streams, lakes, mountains, capes, meadows, hills, …, all anonymous, have been gathered in these databases and therefore require a deepening in the field and via satellite image analysis. The testimonies allow to approximately locate the places but very often it is necessary to go on the spot to determine more accurately their locations. For this, foot expeditions in places difficult to access and/or private are essential. The territorial division respecting the mode of perception of nomadic populations (Bernus 1982; Legoupil 1995), it requires a methodology of analysis and structuring of spatial data adapted, for example, focusing on seasonal mobility and their usual itineraries. No automation of the processing of the collected data can therefore be envisaged to rebuild this heritage and simulate historical dynamics.

The current context also includes the process of recovering Selk'nam, Haush and Yagan languages, which only a few speakers currently speak fluently (about 10 people according to several oral estimates). Several Selk'nam language courses and workshops in Argentina and Chile, as well as yagan in Chile, have emerged in recent decades. Since these languages are of oral and unwritten tradition, the reconstitution of the maps encounters three other difficulties: that of the dialect used (ex: Rivet 1922), the spelling adopted during past transcriptions and the meaning contained in these place names. The spelling chosen by the observer (not from these peoples) distorts the reality of pronunciation, each adapting its method of transcribing remarks according to its mother tongue, different from the one they study (e.g.: (Beauvoir 1915; Belza 1978; Bove n.d.; Bridges 2008, 1987; Delgado Vega 2006; Lothrop 2002; Penazzo 1995; Prosser Goodall 1979). For these maps to be fully usable and in view of the limited number of current speakers, it is necessary to access as many sound archives as possible in order to try to recover the exact pronunciation of these names and, ideally, the meaning of these names. Tracks are possible, for example, thanks to the sound archives collected over several decades by the Franco-American anthropologist Anne Chapman. They are currently based in Ushuaia and will be integrated into the collections of the future institution dedicated to the researcher.

This presentation will also address the production of multithematic maps and several tools to serve these peoples. The future vocation of this interdisciplinary project is to create a free cartographic system that meets similar requirements to those of the Chilean and Argentine national geographical institutes. The argument of lack of means is often used by these states to delay the modification and/or integration of these place names. Aware of the challenge of such a project, we aspire to disseminate this methodology and broaden the number of institutional and community participants. The aim is also to raise public awareness of the need to achieve this not only south of Hatitelen (Magellan Strait), but also in all the territories that have undergone colonization and where several peoples with distinct cultures and languages live together.