Indigenous policy in Chile during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: From assimilation to pluralism. The case of the Mapuche

before the indigenous law of 1993 recognized the existence of cultural plur alism in the national territory and set up the basis for the participation of "the Chilean ethnic groups," the aboriginal peoples were merely consider ed as legal "objects." Indeed, the indigenous policy implemented by the Chi lean state since independence was mainly characterized by the state's will to assimilate the indigenous people. This article deals with the nature of the relations that the Chilean nation (imagined as homogenous and European) and the state (centralized and looking for territorial unity) established with the Mapuche, one of the biggest indigenous groups in Latin America.