Ángela Loij

Ángela Loij López ( – 28 May 1974), baptized as Ángela Gómez, was an Argentine-Chilean woman considered to be the last surviving individual of full-blooded Selkʼnam (Ona) descent, an indigenous group that resides in Tierra del Fuego.

As a young woman, she married Nelson Qànqòt, a Haush baptized by missionaries as Toribio, with whom she had two daughters and a son: Víctor Nelson (born 1919), Laura Soto (born 1922), and Luisa Nelson (born 1926). She participated in a traditional Hain ceremony documented in 1924 by Austrian ethnologist Martin Gusinde. In 1955, she married José Isaías Ule, a young Chilean worker who died in 1969, after which she inherited his house, where she lived on until she died.

In her later years, she was studied by anthropologist Anne Chapman. Loij was born at the Estancia Sara ranch, north of Río Grande, where her father, Loij, worked as a shepherd. She had one brother, Pascual. Her grand-niece, Amalia Gudiño, became a nurse and was elected as a deputy in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies in 1995, becoming the first indigenous person to serve as a deputy in Argentina. Loij was found dead in her home in May 1974, victim of a stroke she suffered at dawn. A school in the Río Grande Department was named in her honour.