Abstract

Dwelling practices that contribute to regenerate the remnants of the template forest among local communities in southern Chile depend upon a relational ontology that is nourished by the Mapuche experience in the Andean foothills. The ethnography of everyday life in the borders of the twentieth-century timber expansion reveals that such practices orchestrate individuals of different species' actions making daily subsistence possible. However, is not a mercantile definition of nature what inspires such practices but an understanding of the relationships among species as families or associations, where trees play a significant role, as exemplified by cases obtained in the field. The local communities' residential pattern embodies the intimate links among human and other beings conceived as partners in the process of being. However, this relational ontology takes place in hybrid landscapes and is strongly influenced by the historical circumstances faced by communities that have been dispossessed by the expansion of the logging industry. This article suggests the need to integrate the historic and the vital versions of materialisms for a better understanding of the ontological processes as experienced in the capitalist peripheries. Meanwhile, the recognition of these communities' contribution to the regeneration of native species remains unacknowledged.