Why do some ethnic minorities identify with the state while others reject national identification? In this project, I examine in-group variation among the Mapuche in Chile, the largest Indigenous group in the country, where some people participate in politics by voting or running for office, while others mobilize for self-determination, sometimes through violent means. My fieldwork suggests this variation extends to identity: some interviewees identified as both Chilean and Mapuche, while others rejected Chile, describing themselves as “Mapuche living under Chilean occupation.”

I argue that extraction helps explain this variation. State-facilitated resource extraction generates relative deprivation and deepens the divide between Indigenous worldviews and the state’s extractive vision of land, which weakens national identification, especially among people who are not culturally engaged, and makes mobilization more likely. I also explore how exposure to self-determination events shapes identification among people who are not culturally engaged. I combine novel data on forestry subsidies with surveys, administrative records, and interviews.

Maps were created by the author in 2022 using QGIS and data from CONADI and CONAF.