We invite you to join us for Field Notes, a new video series featuring award-winning photojournalist and documentary photographer Orin Langelle, co-founder of Global Justice Ecology Project and author of Portraits of Struggle.
Join Orin as he shares the stories behind the captivating images that document interconnected global struggles for ecological, social, and economic justice across six continents and five decades.
Note: We released this episode of Field Notes during Earth Week to highlight the critical work being done by indigenous land defenders – one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.
In southern Chile, the Mapuche people continue a centuries-long struggle to defend their land and rights. In this episode of Field Notes, photographer Orin Langelle shares images and reflections from Mapuche territory, where peaceful landscapes conceal deeper conflicts over land, Indigenous rights, and industrial forestry. Through photographs taken in the region, this short documentary offers a glimpse into the ongoing fight for land, dignity, and self-determination.
Field Notes — Dispatches from the frontlines of land, justice, and resistance is a series of visual dispatches drawn from Langelle’s six decades documenting environmental justice movements, Indigenous land struggles, and social resistance around the world. Learn more about Orin Langelle’s work: https://langellephoto.org To sign on to in support of the Mapuche struggle, go to: https://globaljusticeecology.org/mapu…
I shot this photograph in 2024 at a Mapuche school overlooking Lake Lleu Lleu in Southern Chile. It looks peaceful. Quiet water surrounded by forests, but landscapes hold deeper histories. This is a story about Mupuche resistance and the criminalization of community members. This lake sits within territory Mapuche communities have reclaimed from timber companies and large land owners. Mapuche, whose name means people of the earth, lived here for centuries. Much of their land was taken during violent campaigns by the Chilean state. Today, many communities are taking it back.
Across this lake were detention centers and torture sites during the Pinochet dictatorship. That history still echoes as the Chilean government attempts to suppress the Mupuche land recovery movement.
Before visiting Lake Lleu Lleu, I was here in Temuco at the entrance to the prison. Inside, Mapuche land defenders are being held, accused of crimes tied to their struggle for the land. Their supporters call them something else. Political prisoners.
At another prison in Concepcion, I met an attorney, Victoria Borquez. She represents Mapuche political prisoner Hector Llaitul a founder of the land recovery movement. She spoke about prison conditions, legal violations and what families are enduring. This struggle is not only about land, it’s about justice. It’s about dignity.
I visited these communities in 2019 while documenting land recoveries from pine plantations. During that visit, I photographed two brothers during a ceremony celebrating the Mapuche resistance. When I returned in 2024, their community’s leader, told me both brothers had since been in prison for land recovery actions.
In 2019, I attended the trial of the Mapuche leader Alberto Curamil in Temuco. Curamil helped stop hydroelectric dams on the Rio Cautin. He spent 18 months in prison before his trial. During that time, he was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for defending the river. When the trial ended, Curamil was found not guilty and released. Public pressure helped secure his freedom.
These photographs are fragments of what I’ve witnessed in Chile since my first visit in 2004. They are part of the Mapuche people’s ongoing story of land, resistance, and memory.
Field Notes is an ongoing series documenting struggles from the front lines of resistance across five decades and six continents.
I’m Orin Langelle.
This photo is one of a series of historical photographs contained in Portraits of Struggle, the latest photography book by Orin Langelle. Portraits Of Struggle highlights captivating images documenting interconnected global struggles for environmental, social, and economic justice across six continents and five decades.