In this haunting 1923 photograph, a Selk’nam woman stands in Tierra del Fuego with her child wrapped against her back in a guanaco fur cloak. At first glance, it looks like a quiet image of motherhood: a woman, a child, protection, survival. But behind it is one of the most devastating Indigenous histories in South America. The Selk’nam, also known as the Ona, lived for thousands of years on the island of Tierra del Fuego, at the far southern edge of Chile and Argentina. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers who survived one of the harshest climates on earth, relying heavily on guanaco for food, clothing, shelter, and tools. Then came settlers, gold prospectors, sheep ranchers, and the brutal logic of colonization. Land that had never been “owned” in the European sense was suddenly fenced, claimed, and turned into ranching territory. The Selk’nam hunted sheep as they had hunted guanaco, not because they were criminals, but because their world had been violently overwritten. To the ranchers, they became an obstacle. To the state, they became a “problem.” To bounty hunters, they became targets. Historians have documented campaigns of extermination in which Selk’nam people were hunted, captured, displaced, and killed as ranching and colonial expansion took over Tierra del Fuego. Missionaries later gathered survivors into missions, where forced assimilation, disease, confinement, and cultural destruction continued what the rifles had begun. Children were separated from old ways of speaking, moving, believing, and remembering. Survivors often stopped passing down language and identity because being visibly Selk’nam had become dangerous. That is one of the cruelest parts of genocide: it does not only kill bodies. It teaches descendants to hide themselves in order to live. For many years, the Selk’nam were spoken of as if they had vanished completely. But that language is changing. Descendants have fought to be recognized, to reclaim identity, and to challenge the idea that genocide made them disappear. In Chile, Selk’nam recognition became a major issue in recent years, with descendants insisting: *we are still here.* #drthehistories