Towards intercultural public policy: Ranco’s Rural Drinking Water project, Wallmapu- Araucanía

Abstract (English)

There is substantial international evidence showing that public policies relating to the enactment of the human right to water and sanitation in Indigenous communities should be based on an intercultural dialogue respectful of indigenous worldviews, knowledge, and practices (Arrojo, 2022; Jiménez et al., 2014). Such a decision-making approach would prevent further entrenching the historical marginalisation of indigenous communities and their knowledge from dominant management arrangements. However, public policies in Chile tend to be designed, managed, and imposed in a top-down and technocratic manner (Jirón et al., 2018), obscuring historical and asymmetrical power relations (Boccara, 2012) and the experiential, situated knowledge of people at whom these interventions are directed and claim to benefit. This presentation is based on a research project using Institutional Ethnography (Smith, 2005) a feminist sociology developed to unveil the powerful ruling relations embedded in institutional texts, and their associated discourses, which act to generalise and homogenise knowledge across settings, around a specific function. Thus, I explore the Chilean Rural Drinking Water program from the experiences of a community located in Ranco, Mapuche-Lafkenche territory in the region known as Wallmapu-Arraucanía. The project looks at the everyday practices of those working to negotiate, produce and deliver drinking water to their communities, and the kimün (knowledge) that emerges from the interactions between the wingka (chilean) regulatory framework on water, and the Mapuche-Lavkenche worldview, to co-create avenues for a more inclusive, respectful, and intercultural Rural Drinking Water program where different conceptions on, and relations with water, may be allowed to co-exist.