This paper examines the relationship between sound and ecology among the Mapuche, the largest indigenous nation in Chile. I argue that sound is the central mediator of itrofill mongen, the concept encapsulating the ecological biodiversity defended by the Mapuche cosmovision. Indeed, their ecocentric relationality is sustained through the coexistence and intercommunication of diverse forms of dungun, communicative sound-voices possessed not only by humans but also by birds, rivers, and mountains, among other non-human entities (Catriquir 2007). While rooted in traditional ecological knowledge, I also contend that itrofill mongen is a rather recent development, crystallizing in the 1990s as a response to the climate crisis and the increasing transnational interconnectivity of indigenous movements (Tucker 2019). Rather than framing itrofill mongen as an invention of tradition, I read its emergence as the outcome of the dynamic interplay between sound, organisms, and the Wallmapu—the Mapuche territory (Di Giminiani 2016). The Mapuche argue that the diverse forms of dungun mediating itrofill mongen have historically been inscribed in more-than-human bodies and spaces, turning the ecosystem into a resounding and transformative sound archive (Ochoa 2014; Minks and Ochoa 2021). This non-textual understanding of sound inscription elucidates the emergence of itrofill mongen as a construct grounded in traditional ecological knowledge yet simultaneously responsive to both translocal indigenous relations and the environmental precarity brought by the Anthropocene. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates the generative and creative nature of indigenous ecological knowledges, thereby challenging theories that present Amerindian cosmovisions as fixed, static, and eternal systems from the past.

In the state of Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon, carimbó – as an Afro-Indigenous music and dance with a centuries-old history, as a regional popular music genre since the mid-20th century, and as an officially recognized immaterial cultural patrimony since the 2010s – has been crucial to the formation of a complex and layered archive of land and river-based knowledge. As Amazonian quilombola poet and historian Roberta Tavares states: “In the Amazonian territories, the waters influence our conceptions of art, our poetics, our musical ancestry. They are the core of the carimbós made in Pará. (...) The carimbó songbook is swarming with images of rivers, beaches, bays, matos, igapós, igarapés.” (2022) This paper investigates how carimbós made in Pará – as “acoustic assemblages” (Ochoa 2014) with different lives – resound processes of place making and place destruction tied to uneven relations between state/corporate led developmentalist strategies for the region and ancestral histories of connection with the territory. More specifically, by engaging with carimbó as song, ancestral expressive art, cultural patrimony, and popular music genre, I point to some ways in which carimbós are co-produced by frictions, disputes and clashes between (sometimes oddly interconnected) ontologies of land operating in the Brazilian Amazon. This work contributes to conversations on how the different temporalities and contradictions of processes of land dispossession and devastation resound in music practices and archives (Sakakibara 2009, Impey 2018, Silvers 2018).

Chile is one of seven countries with a territorial claim in the Antarctic, though most of the 56 parties to the Antarctic Treaty do not recognize its sovereignty. Nevertheless, Chile’s southernmost region, Magallanes y Antártica Chilena, administratively ties southern Chile with the Antarctic Peninsula. In this paper, I demonstrate how sonic properties of human and non-human actors complicate and inscribe Antarctic territory in Southern Chile. I examine the case of snow and ice sounding, demonstrating how their various forms of vibration and representation simultaneously reinforce and undermine geopolitical classifications of the Antarctic during accelerated climate change. Accordingly, I draw on multispecies ethnographic and archival research, focusing on field recordings, audiovisual soundscape projects, and a soundwalk experience based in Punta Arenas, Chile. By weaving these projects’ and their creators’ epistemologies with data from glacier and snow recordings, I demonstrate overlapping, disjunct processes at work in constructing Antarctica from and in the South American continent. Specifically, I show how these case studies highlight the fragmented colonialism of Punta Arenas’ identity as an Antarctic City. I argue for pluralistic, embodied definitions of Antarctic territory based in multispecies sonic assemblages (Ochoa 2014), pushing back against the colonial constructions of territory that define much of the discourse surrounding the continent. Accordingly, I propose a multisensory, process-based approach to the discussion of aural borders (Kun 2000), and I contribute to emerging posthuman music research methodologies (Mundy 2018, Graper 2023, Kohn 2013, Haraway 2016).