Donia Human Rights Center Lecture | Reflections on Chile's Constitutional Process and the Proposal for Pluri-Nationality made by Indigenous People

Speaker: Elisa Loncon Antileo, First president of the 2021 Chilean Constitutional Convention; Professor of Education, University of Santiago, Chile
Discussant: Matthew Fletcher, Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law & Professor of American Culture, University of Michigan

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required if you intend to participate virtually. Once you’ve registered, the joining information will be sent to your email.
Register at: https://myumi.ch/XnXAW

In addition to analyzing multiple factors that led to the rejection of the proposed constitution in 2022, Loncon’s lecture will explain the foundational basis of pluri-nationality, a concept that was incorporated into the proposed constitution through democratic negotiation within the Convention. The presentation will invite the audience to consider indigenous and environmental issues in Latin America through an approach that is inclusive, democratic, and equitable, and that recognizes the rights of nature. This strategy offers a contribution to the processes of decolonization and the toppling of patriarchy, which are unfolding within a crisis of democracy and of relationships between states and native peoples in the twenty-first century.

Born in the Mapuche community of Lefweluan in Chile, Elisa Loncon Antileo is a linguist and an Indigenous rights and languages activist and Professor of Education at the University of Santiago de Chile. Loncón was awarded the René Cassin Human Rights Award from the Basque Government to recognize her substantial contributions to the defense of human rights, and in 2021 was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and one of Financial Times’s 25 most influential women.

In 2021, Loncón was elected as a representative of the Mapuche people to the Chilean Constitutional Convention, and then elected as the Convention’s first president (July 2021–January 2022). Following mass protests across the nation in 2019 and a national vote in 2020 in favor of replacing the constitution that dated to the Pinochet dictatorship, the Convention was tasked with drafting a replacement constitutional text. Although Chilean voters subsequently rejected the proposed draft text, the process of developing the recommendations—which directly addressed issues of indigenous representation, gender parity, and environmental protections, among other changes—was instructive and will inform subsequent efforts toward reform.

Matthew L.M. Fletcher is the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He teaches and writes in the areas of Federal Indian Law, American Indian Tribal Law, Anishinaabe legal and political philosophy, constitutional law, federal courts, and legal ethics. He sits as the Chief Justice of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. He also sits as an appellate judge for several other tribal nations. He is a member of the Grand Traverse Band. Professor Fletcher graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1997 and the University of Michigan in 1994. He is married to Wenona Singel, a member of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, and they have two sons, Owen and Emmett.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.