Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>In Chile, contemporary Mapuche people’s perspectives on sickness, healing, and death often clash with the biomedical model endorsed by the state. Indigenous intercultural health facilitators navigate these challenging healthcare pathways alongside Mapuche and other Indigenous patients. This chapter examines the crucial work of these facilitators, exploring the challenges of precarious labor conditions and the often-unattainable goal of translating Indigenous illness experiences for non-Indigenous providers. Drawing on interviews with intercultural health facilitators, the chapter outlines the communicative labor they carry out to support Indigenous communities in a context of medical pluralism. We focus on the asymmetric realities shaping their communicative care work and their strategies to empower themselves and their patients by speaking Mapuzungun and performing various forms of communicative labor in biomedical spaces. An essential part of their work involves translating deeply spiritual experiences like spiritual loss or “emptiness,” which have tangible effects on patients’ wellbeing but are invisible to conventional medical providers. Finally, the chapter discusses the role of language in healing and the facilitators’ contributions to meaningful healing processes and worldmaking that go beyond mere translation. As cultural brokers, Mapuche intercultural facilitators are vital in bridging communication gaps between the hegemonic biomedical system, the scientific view of health, the Mapuche medical system, and Mapuche ways of experiencing illness and wellbeing.</jats:p>