Cristina Calderón

Cristina Calderón Harban (24 May 1928 – 16 February 2022) was a Chilean ethnographer, craftswoman, writer and cultural activist who was the last living full-blooded Yahgan person after the death of her 84-year-old sister Úrsula in 2005. By 2004, Calderón (often referred to as simply "Abuela", Spanish for "grandmother") and her sister-in-law Emelinda Acuña were the only two remaining native speakers of the Yahgan language, an indigenous language in Tierra del Fuego.

Early life Calderón was born in Robalo, Puerto Williams, Navarino Island, on 24 May 1928 to Juan Calderón and Carmen Harban . Zárraga, along with her husband Oliver Vogel, published , a dictionary and storybook of the Yahgan language, in 2010, based on interviews with Calderón. A biography of Calderón was published in 2017 titled "Cristina Calderón, Memorias de mi abuela Yagán" by her granddaughter Cristina Zárraga. She was the mother of ten children and grandmother to 19 as of 2017. Calderon spent her time creating traditional handicrafts and sharing Yahgan culture and language with her family.

She died on 16 February 2022, aged 93, at the Hospital Clínico de Magallanes in Punta Arenas as a result of complications from COVID-19. Her death was announced by her daughter, Lidia González, who served as the deputy vice president of the Chilean constitutional convention.