“The mountain has memory: Rescuing knowledge and wisdom to promote environmental education”, is the name of the project that we will execute during the next 6 months, thanks to funding from the VCM Department of the Universidad Austral.

The idea was born out of the difficulty of establishing points of encounter and transmission of local knowledge and know-how between generations, which has already been described by several researchers. Some publications have reported that children are not learning about nature as their ancestors did in relation to practices and knowledge about gathering and consuming wild edible plants.

The commune of Panguipulli has a total population of 34,539 inhabitants, 44% of whom call themselves Mapuche and 55.8% live in rural areas.

The three schools participating in this proposal are located in the rural areas of Neltume, Puerto Fuy, and Pirehuico. This last place is located one hour and thirty minutes by boat from the communal capital. The participating schools provide basic education, are multi-grade and have one teacher, who is the only one in charge of teaching children of different ages. This has led students to have limited interaction and links with other people outside the territory, such as university students and/or researchers, as well as to innovative experiences that allow them to integrate knowledge from the compulsory school curriculum with the knowledge and wisdom of the territory.

In this context, the importance of establishing a link with isolated rural educational establishments arises. These require exchanges of educational experiences based on the articulation with external actors to promote innovative processes of environmental education with territorial relevance, aimed at the revitalization and valorization of local knowledge and wisdom that families and mainly older adults have about nature, culture and the mountain habitat.

Thus, through our proposal, we seek to recognize the practices, beliefs and knowledge of living in the mountains that make up the biocultural memory of the inhabitants of the villages of Neltume, Puerto Fuy and Pirehueico. Our purpose is to promote through practical and collaborative experiences that link science and art, the intergenerational dialogue on ecological, geological and cultural processes associated with the experience of living in the mountain villages of these communities. Finally, we seek to implement, in collaboration with students, a prototype of a cultural box of educational materials to raise awareness about the importance of these ecosystems.