Alberto Curamil raises his shirt to show me a patchwork of scars from a shotgun blast.
He says police shot him as he was leaving a protest.
"Each one of these pellets got more than 10 centimetres into my body," he says.
"The scars remain but we won't give up the fight. We will carry on forever."
We're standing in what feels like an idyllic forest in the centre of Chile.
But it's an area that's become a battleground between Indigenous Mapuche and government security forces.
As a Mapuche "lonko", or chief, Curamil is one of the leaders of a movement to reclaim and protect traditional land that, he says, was stolen from his people.
Around his home in Curacautin, he is taking direct action to reclaim land.
He drives us through farmland that he says is in the process of "retrieval", meaning his community has simply appropriated the land from neighbouring farmers and put its own cattle on it.
"There is nothing in place legally and I'm not interested in knowing if there might be. We are exercising our right to improve our people's lives. We are doing this with pride," he says.
To conservative politicians in Chile, he's a dangerous militant.
Last October, the government declared a state of emergency in the region after a spate of violent clashes.
To progressives, he's an environmental hero. In 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize – sometimes called the "green Nobel" – for stopping two dam projects.
To win the fight, Curamil built a broad campaign base beyond the Mapuche community, getting help from environmental NGOs, academics and lawyers.
His daughter Belen had to accept the award in San Francisco on his behalf as he was in prison.
"We are a threat to the business world," he says. "The military sees us as criminals and are authorised to shoot us."
Police sought to have him jailed for 50 years for involvement in an armed robbery.
There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, and supporters claimed the prosecution aimed to stop his activism. He was acquitted of all charges.
Just 18 months later, he took part in a protest after a Mapuche activist's home was burned down. The demonstrators barricaded the highway with burning tyres.
Curamil says he was driving away when police in a pick-up chased him down and fired a tear gas canister into the vehicle, then shot him in the leg and neck as he tried to get out.
But being shot and jailed hasn't slowed him down.
He invites us to join him the next morning at the latest land occupation on a sacred volcano, starting at dawn.
Protecting a 'pillan'
Mapuche means "people of the land". It's the country's biggest Indigenous group, comprising 12 per cent of the Chilean population, and it was the last to be defeated.
In the 1880s, the Mapuche still controlled a vast nation, called Wallmapu, that stretched from the Pacific to beyond the Andes.
But the young Chilean government, having won independence from Spain, used its modern military to crush Wallmapu's independence.
The next disaster for the Mapuche came a century later when the US-backed dictator General Augusto Pinochet sold off much of what remained of their communal land, privatised water and gave big corporations development rights to their forests and rivers.
Ancient trees were felled to make way for fast-growing eucalyptus plantations.
Rivers that were sacred to the Mapuche were dammed for hydroelectric projects.
Today, the push for clean energy threatens what the Mapuche see as their sacred volcanoes.
At dawn, we arrive at the base of the Tolhuaca Volcano, where Curamil has gathered his community to stop the construction of a geothermal plant.
Lamb is grilling on open fires, and women are roasting bread and pine nuts for breakfast.
Curamil blows a traditional horn to gather the elders.
He tells them the volcano is a "pillan", a divinity, which the power company plans to attack.
Young men and boys in ponchos and feather headdresses start to dance to the accompaniment of drums and traditional trumpets called "trutruka".
Buses somehow navigate the steep rocky track to bring more supporters from neighbouring communities.
The men start playing "palin", a Mapuche stick-and-ball game pre-dating hockey by centuries.
Curamil tells me everything they do reflects their connection to the land.
"When we arrive at a sacred site, we can't enter as Westerners do. They often don't respect it. We respect it," he says.
"The first day we arrive, we plant our flag and hold a ceremony. And, today, we are doing a bigger ceremony, with people from other territories, because we need to join forces to defend the pillan, which is the Tolhuaca Volcano.
"So long as we are here, we can 'safeguard' this place, to use the language of those who protect big business … the politicians and the military."
'They are terrorists'
There is a darker side to the Mapuche struggle.
Weichán Auka Mapu is an armed revolutionary group that has claimed responsibility for multiple attacks on police, churches and forestry companies.
Similar groups and individuals have caused tens of millions of dollars of damage and threatened forestry workers at gunpoint.
Curamil says his community does not use violence and claims some attacks have been staged by security forces.
A few days later, we are following a military convoy looking for murderers. A forestry worker has just been killed by masked men and an outspoken farmer has been shot dead on his way home.
The soldiers set up a checkpoint near a Mapuche settlement but find nothing.
Police name the dead farmer as 68-year-old Joel Durán.
No group claims responsibility, but a local politician, Gloria Naveillán, tells us there is no doubt militant Mapuche were responsible.
"Joel was a leader of the small farmers who lived in that area for a lot of years," she says.
"During that time, he was very confrontational with the people who were attacking them and with the government who didn't have solutions for them.
Naveillán has just been elected to Congress to represent the area where Curamil lives. Like many Chileans of European descent, she bristles at suggestions the Mapuche are owed something for the loss of their land.
"Every time a country wants to conquer territory, you have conflict. It's something that has been happening in history since history is history," she says.
"Today, everyone has a TV set, a washing machine, a refrigerator, all those things that few people had in Chile before. It doesn't matter if they're Mapuche or not."
The fight in the city
Jaime Cuyanao sees no reason to be grateful for what Chile has given him. He was born in the capital, Santiago, after his family left their homeland in the Pinochet years.
He grew up among Mapuche who feared it was dangerous to identify as Indigenous or to speak the Mapuche language, Mapudungun.
"Pinochet tried to homogenise us by saying that we are all Chileans and that there is no room for any other identity," he says.
"Many Mapuche had to abandon their language and culture because expressing it was linked to communism and could put their lives at risk."
Today he raps in Spanish and Mapudungun about how the state stole their land and tried to erase their culture, performing under the name Waikil.
"Many Chileans want to learn about our culture and we accept them. They can learn and understand us, and this society can look in the mirror and see that we are all descended from Mapuche people."
Some hope the long-running conflict could be close to resolution.
In 2019, Chile was rocked by nationwide street protests against social inequality. The government agreed to a referendum to scrap the Pinochet-era constitution.
The assembly drawing up the new constitution elected a Mapuche woman, Professor Elisa Loncón, as its first president.
Professor Loncón insists the new constitution should recognise the Mapuche and other Indigenous groups as separate nations.
She says it will create an opportunity for Mapuche to end violent protests and resolve their claims peacefully.
"We need them to stop that because we need to be part of the new democracy," she says.
In December, Chile elected a new president, Gabriel Boric, who immediately promised to back Professor Loncón's agenda.
"He said that he will recognise the new constitution; he will support the new constitution," she says.
Curamil doubts politicians in Santiago can change anything. He says the fight will always be on the ground in the old Mapuche homeland.
"The struggle of the people has nothing to do with governments. We live off the land and we do not live or improve our situation because of governments taking power in different places."
Watch 'Mapuche Rising' on Foreign Correspondent tonight at 8pm on ABC TV and iview, and streaming live on the ABC News Facebook page and ABC In-Depth YouTube channel.
