Küme mongen: a Mapuche heritage lifestyle model for inhabiting the world from the earth's cycle

Abstract

This work proposes küme mongen as a living heritage model of our Mapuche people, a shoot rooted in Mapuche kimün (knowledge). This way of life has been transmitted from generation to generation, and its central premise is an ancestral proposal for inhabiting the world in balance with the Earth's cycle. We approach this model using nütram (a methodological approach) and from a testimonial and experiential perspective. We analyze how küme mongen challenged the anthropocentric paradigm and the extractive logics of capitalism, offering a highly effective path while simultaneously challenging the excessive transgressions that we humans generate in the territory. Through this work we argue that küme mongen is not a utopian or institutionalizable proposal, but, above all, a daily ethical and political praxis that reconciles the che, the person with the territory and offers a framework of ancestral cultural wisdom to rethink the practices of cultural heritage in the context of what we now call the human-nature relationship.