Rostro Sobre Hoja

Or Face on a Leaf. That’s the title of this woodcarving by Enriqueta Gastelumendi de Santin on display at the Museo del Fin del Mundo in Ushuaia, Argentina. I liked its understated elegance and the sense of power it evokes.

De Santin, a local artist who passed away in 2001, was a direct descendent of the Selk’nam people, one of four indigenous groups who inhabited Tierra del Fuego, which as the name of the museum suggests, lies at the southern tip of South America. The period from the late 1880s to the early 1900s witnessed the Selk’nam Genocide, when the estimated population of about 4,000 was reduced to less than 500, in large part due to the growing European settler ranching presence in the remote region.

Some scholars considered the Selk’nam extinct as a group when Angela Loji, believed to be the last full-blooded Selk’nam, died in 1974. Recent censuses in Argentina (2010) and Chile (2017) showed that 2,761 and 1,144 people in the countries, respectively consider themselves Selk’nam.

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Today’s Pic du Jour, the site’s 20th (!) straight, was taken in Ushuaia, Argentina, on 4 February 2013.