LOVE TO DEATH - LEMI PONIFASIO

Mr. President, I want to ask you a question:

Why do you legislate so fast when it comes to your salaries, your benefits?
And why does it take so much time to legislate on issue 169?
How many years did it take to make that law valid here in Chile?
Good afternoon traditional authorities, good afternoon men and women that are here today.

I think that today we are worthy of congratulating ourselves, all, for the ability and fortitude we have had to survive 200 years of genocide, repression and judicialization, and that today we are here product of poverty, of extinction, of extermination, of all the killing that exists upon us in the 9th region, and we've been here brothers.

That's why I want to ask you, to each and every one of you: Will we continue under the wing of the Chilean State or will we ask for autonomy and self-determination and the restitution of our lands.

What are we going to ask for today? AUTONOMY!

Do you want territory or not? YES!

In 1852, on July the 2nd, this parliament, the deputies that existed at that time, the same as those of today, with the same Chilean legislation, they entered the Mapuche territory, violating our rights, killing our people, our grandparents, our mothers, our brothers, that existed at that time.

Today, year 2011, it is the same situation.

Are we women going to keep enduring that they keep hitting our children let them keep killing us, let them keep violating us from the womb of our mothers, let them keep killing our children that we bring in the womb?

Are we going to continue bearing that, brothers?

Are you Chilean or are Mapuches? Or are you indigenous?

Then we have to make feel our hand here in the congress and tell them that here is the Mapuche nation, the nation of Janequeo, the nation of Pelentaro, the nation of Lefratru, the nation of those men and women who gave their life for us to exist here.

We can't keep letting the deputies and senators keep designing laws that are destined to usurp our lands, to murder our people, our humanity, to exterminate our people by legislating their laws.

Today in a different way, in the name of technology, they keep us imprisoned, in the name of god, they keep killing us, in the name of all of that they keep taking the lands from us,

In the meantime, their pockets and the banks of the European Union and different banks in the world are overfilled with money and we have to bear poverty and extinction.

They are taking all our wealth.
That's why brothers, all together: let’s defend the territory!

And today, here we are the lonkos; it’s with us they have to deal, the parliamentarians and deputies.

Here we stand, the nation of Pelentaro, here we stand, the women that defend our kids, here we are the mothers that are the future of our nations It’s with us that they have to deal with!

We can't keep letting them keep subordinating us. We do not want any institution:
we don't want CONADI,
we don't want Origin Plan.

We, the women who have suffered, who have lived under dominion, under oppression, we must take control and economic monopoly for our future children, and to give a fair projection of life to our people, it’s necessary.

But we can't keep asking for a crumb, a space... Space must be made comrades and brothers! Our space has to be respected.

We have not come here to ask the deputies and senators to legislate for us.
We have come to demand that you no longer legislate for us, do not speak for us. We are going to speak for ourselves.
Never again, brothers.

That's why we have to decide today what Brother Juan Valeria said: we are a nation, and as a nation we need a territory, extermination free, and autonomy.

Companies that enter the territory must consult with us, and if they don’t: OUT! Out of our territory.
It is our life or theirs.

Chaltu may, pu lamgen.
(Thank you very much, brothers)