Extinction is an artwork that shares the words of the Mapuche Machi (Shaman) Millaray Melinao to the Susquehanock people, original inhabitants of the Susquehanna river basins. Mapuches are the indigenous people of Central Chile and the Susquehannock people, as a cultural entity, are considered extinct.

Machi Millaray Melinao addresses in Mapudungún (Mapuche language) a message to the Susquehannock people in which she acknowledges their life, experiences, struggles, sorrows and voices by recognizing in their memories the pain of war, the violence suffered and the endless sadness to which the inhabitants of these lands were subjected to.

In her message, the Machi also recognizes the despair of these spirits to feel the wind, the water, the plants, the river, the smoke, and the need for the ancestral language of the Land, which allows them to recognize the living sacredness of these experiences, which are housed in the spaces where they existed. The cruel wars killed dreams, communal gatherings and conversations, songs, ceremonies and rites, knowledge, it destroyed Nature, but our Being as peoples of the Land (Mapuche) allows us to recognize and find those lives in the running water that flows from old times until now. The wars could not put an end to the spiritual beings.

The Machis, for the living and ancestral Mapuche people of Chile and Argentina, are people -generally women- of great wisdom and healing power. They master the knowledge of healing herbs, have the power to connect and dialogue with the spirits, and have the ability to interpret dreams. Dreams are considered of great importance in the Mapuche culture as they are considered messages sent by the ancestral spirits to the living. The word Mapuche, in their native language, means “People of the Earth” or “Children of the Earth”. Mapuche cosmology is based on complex notions of spirits that coexist with humans, trees, mountains, rivers, plants and in general what is alive or has been alive, coexisting in the natural world as entities that collaborate with each other.

The Susquehannock, also known as the Conestoga, were an Iroquois people who lived in the lower Susquehanna River basin. Their name means “people of the muddy river”. From their language, only about 100 words have been preserved, which have managed to maintain the sound of those words, such as the word Susquehanna. The name Conestoga may also be the English form of Gandastogue, which is possibly the closest form to what the Susquehannock called themselves. During the 16th and 17th centuries, these people traded furs with settlers and fought wars over land disputes and in 1763 their last members were massacred by the vigilante group known as the Paxton Boys.