Millaray Huichalaf, a Mapuche machi — a healer and spiritual guide — rides in a boat on the Pilmaiquen River in Los Rios, southern Chile, July 12, 2022. During years of training to become a machi, she started having dreams about Kintuantü, a ngen, or protector spirit, living by a broad bend of the Pilmaiquen. “Through dreams and visions in trance, Kintuantü told me that I had to speak for him because he was dying,” Huichalaf says. She has led a sometimes-violent battle against hydroelectric plants on the Pilmaiquen, which flows through rolling pastures from a lake in the Andes’ foothills. “I am the river too, we’re as sacred as the river,” says. “At the same time as we’re fighting for the river, we’re in the process of territorial recovery and spiritual reconstruction.”
(AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
