Graciela Huinao

Graciela Huinao (born 1956) is a Mapuche poet and fiction writer. Huinao, who writes in Spanish, is the first Indigenous woman to join the Academia Chilena de la Lengua.

Biography Graciela Huinao was born in the area of Osorno, Chile, in 1956. Her parents, Herminia Alarcón and Dolorindo Huinao Loi, were Huilliche. Huinao's education began in 1962, when she enrolled in Escuela 107. She was raised speaking Spanish, not Mapudungun, because her father had been punished at school for speaking his native language and he feared she would experience the same; she later studied her ancestral language as an adult.

Her grandfather, Adolfo Huinao, had fled at the age of 5 with his mother from their native island to Chile when their island was invaded and Adolfo's father and his elder brother were murdered. According to Huinao, Adolfo was not Mapuche, but likely Kawésqar or Chono.

Huinao's mother died in 1969, when she was 13 years old, and her father died eight years later, in 1977. After his death, she moved to Santiago.

Her work has also been published in translation, including into English, Chinese, Hebrew, and Indigenous languages of North America.

Huinao became the first Indigenous woman to join the Academia Chilena de la Lengua in 2014.

Selected works

Walinto, poetry, bilingual edition, with translation into Mapudungun by Clara Antinao Varas; published by La Garza Morena, Santiago, 2001 (republished by Cuarto Propio, 2008, in a trilingual format: Mapudungun-Spanish-English) La nieta del brujo, seis relatos williche, Caballo de Mar, 2003 Desde el fogón de una casa de putas williche, novel, Caballo del Mar, 2010 Katrilef, hija de un ülmen mapuche williche. Relato de su vida, Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias Sociales, 2015