The Rise of the Yaghan, Indigenous People of Tierra del Fuego Once Declared ‘Extinct’

The southernmost tip of South America is a jagged splay of islands, as if a careless god dropped a dinner plate. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet here and the match is pitilessly stormy. The weather is mercurial—rain, hail, snow, and sun can beat the land within the span of an hour—but, on this summer’s day in February, it is sunny, warm, and windless. Kelp gulls natter, waves lap against a rocky islet, and a coppery tang—a blend of marine snails and algae—wafts across the reef where I’m helping gather limpets, scraping them off rough stones along the Beagle Channel.

Bucket full, I head off in José German González Calderón’s rowboat, in search of his crab pots. I am on the starboard oar, photographer Kat Pyne is on the port, and González Calderón watches our flailing from his seat at the stern with an expression that flits between willed neutrality and bemusement. Feofeo, his fluffy white dog, sits in the prow. Feofeo, Spanish for uglyugly, is cutecute and staring at us.

González Calderón, 58, solidly built, with a full head of gray-dusted hair, teases us: “Feofeo is bored; we are going too slowly.”

Despite thousands and thousands of years of history, the story of the Yaghan, and other Indigenous cultures, has often emphasized one moment: the disastrous meeting with Europeans. And that’s what drives me here, an irritation that across the Americas, popular culture has focused relentlessly on that one point in time, and though significant, it’s like writing a badly abridged version of a multilayered story. A deeper truth lies buried, rich with a diversity of characters spanning time and place.