The coastal hunter gatherers of the southern coastal archipelagos who were transferred to Chiloé during the 17th and 18th centuries played a connecting role between these two worlds as they were familiar with the geography of an environment that could not be dominated by the Spaniards and the Veliche of Chiloé. They became forced facilitators of the activities of these groups in the Chonos archipelago, undertaking tasks as translators, guides, divers, watchers, and seekers of other indigenous groups. The canoeists transferred to the islands of Cailin and Chaulinec with civilizing purposes from 1743 onwards did not completely abandon their territory, not only returning to their islands on a permanent basis to practice ancestral activities (fishing, shellfish gathering, consumption of sea lion meat) but also bringing new occupations from Chiloé, such as agriculture and livestock breeding, which were developed for purposes of exchange with the inhabitants of Chiloé rather than for mere subsistence. As a result, these people developed subsistence strategies based on elements present in their culture, such as the exploitation of exogenous materials of cultural origin (shipwrecks remains) as exchangeable items; the adaptation of techniques and technologies for food preparation and conservation; the use of new ecological niches other than the strictly coastal inlets or the usual islands, such as islands with pastures for the free breeding of European cattle, among other practices that account for an active attitude towards the new world that was being imposed on them.

The forced occupation of the Wallmapu, the Mapuche territory, though a military campaign known as Pacification of Araucanía, contributed to the coerced migration of Mapuche people to the cities. This article delves, from an analytical and political perspective, into the experiences of Mapuche women who have worked in domestic service in Santiago de Chile, the capital city of the country with the highest number of Mapuche women. This is a multisited ethnographic research comprising the regions of El Biobío, La Araucanía, and Los Ríos, and the city of Santiago. The decolonized and decolonizing methodological perspectives used involved knowledge and social conventions characteristic of the Mapuche people. The methodological strategy included participating observation. Thirty two Mapuche women, who lived in the diaspora and have returned to the Wallmapu, participated. In-depth interviews were carried out with twenty women. Four discussion groups were conducted with 12 women, including two of the interviewed women, in the city of Santiago and in the regions of La Araucanía and Los Ríos. The findings show colonial continuities in racialized work spaces, which manifest themselves in a variety of class, race, and gender clashes, and which dialectically give rise to subjectivities and everyday micro-resistances that shape the Mapuche diaspora identity of these women.