
The Selk'nam, also known as the Onawo or Ona people, are an indigenous people in the Patagonian region of southern Argentina and Chile, including the Tierra del Fuego islands.
.The Selk’nam, a stone-age hunting culture inhabited the Tierra del Fuego area of southern Argentina and Chile for 7,000 years. During those times the tribes lived nomadically and in tune with the land—hunting, gathering and fishing...
..The Selk’nam had no chiefs, but were instead led by wise men (‘fathers of the world’) who were believed to possess spiritual power over people, weather and events. The tribe’s most sacred ceremony was the coming-of-age, or the ‘hain’. Adult male members of the tribe would be painted with red, black and white paint and don fur, down and bark costumes, impersonating much feared spirits. Over a period of days or weeks they would conduct a complex initiation to transition boys into manhood.
They were one of the last native groups in South America to be encountered by migrant ethnic Europeans or Westerners in the late 19th century.
With the discovery of gold and expansion of sheep farming, the Argentine and Chilean governments began efforts to explore, colonize and commit genocide against the indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego
(the "land of fire", named by early European explorers observing smoke from Selk'nam fires) into their cultures.









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