UCLA

This ethnography presents a study of Rapanui worldviews and examines land-being relations in Rapa Nui from both ontological and historical perspectives. Informed by Rapanui oral traditions, I provide a preliminary exploration of Rapanui ontological concepts in relation to the land in order to explain how they are fundamental to understand the political history of this South Pacific Island and its problematic relation with the Chilean nation-state. I present this exploration from an intersubjective approach that integrates Rapanui hermeneutics into the scholarly discourse. In doing so, this ethnography problematizes the primitivization of indigenous peoples by a scholarly tradition that has often depersonalized land as well as dichotomized social realities through the imposition of its own modernist ontological assumptions. By asserting the validity and complexity of Rapanui forms of knowledge, this ethnography aims to contribute to the Rapanui work of decolonization by articulating Rapanui arguments on land-being relations beyond simplistic representations of Rapanui "spirituality" and more as efficacious discourses of resistance.