**Abstract**

In the present essay, the author—and Mapuche, at the same time—critically analyzes the construction of the Mapuche people as a "vulnerable human group" under the International Human Rights Law and then, according to decolonial option, proposes a hypothesis: if the indigenous people are vulnerable, by definition, to claim the right to self-determination, in the Mapuche case, it is an oxymoron.

**Keywords:** indigenous peoples, Mapuche, modernity, decoloniality, human rights, vulnerability, victimhood, right to self-determination, racism

## **1. Introduction**

Today, Art. 1 of "Indigenous Act," No. 19.253, recognizes nine "Chilean" indigenous peoples. Among these, the Mapuche stand out not only because they have the highest population but also because of their claim to self-determination, which they have been carrying out under the current legal paradigm of the International Human Rights Law (IHRL), specifically, based on the recognition of this right made by the ILO Convention No. 169 (1989), United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), and, lately, the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples (2016), normative triad that constitutes the "right to autonomy or self-government" in the context of "Indigenous Law," scilicet, the set of national and international norms dictated to regulate the cultural, environmental, and patrimonial peculiarities of the native peoples.

After the "invention" of America [1], the Indianous Law came to define Indigenous subjectivity. At present, this task has been entrusted to the IHRL; hence, the indigenous are born and die under the logical and conceptual scheme of human rights. This has brought certain benefits because intercultural policies have made it possible to review the historical situation of indigenous people and advance in the recognition and enjoyment of certain rights, even when these are cultural or "folkloric" kind. In the case of political rights, on the other hand, the said recognition and enjoyment has not been successful, especially when what is claimed is territorial control, self-government, and self-determination.

The purpose of this essay is to give an account of the current state of autodeterminist Mapuche's claim, reminding the reader that perseverance in this juridical argument, under scheme of Indigenous Law, will not lead to either an internal autonomy or, much less, an external sovereignty. From the "colonial difference" [2] brought about by modernity and my Mapuche-Chilean "border" position, I propose to advance in the construction of a proper, local, and pertinent discourse on the situation of the Mapuche-Chilean as a way to advance toward the decolonization of Indigenous Law and, definitely, that the Chilean State recognizes and validates the Mapuche as a sovereign people, politically, legally, and territorially. For this, my essay is divided into two sections. Into the first, entitled "The indigenous people as a vulnerable human group," I review the main subjectivity assigned by imperialism—from the colonial category of "amentes" to the current classification of "vulnerable"—always under the assumption that the Indigenous people are disabled. In the second section, the title corresponds to the hypothesis offered by this essay—"Mapuche self-determination, an oxymoron?"—since, under the current legal configuration, it becomes a paradox, not because Indigenous Law itself and the Chilean courts deny it, but because the IHRL constitutes a paradigm of contemporary imperialism and the "coloniality of power" [3] under which not only political self-determination is closed, but even cultural is extremely limited.
