President of the Chilean Constitutional convention, Elisa Loncón Antileo, receives Coppieters Award in Brussels.
With these awards, Coppieters recognises her exceptional contribution to the defense of democracy and cultural rights as well as to the ideals of peace and diversity.
“I grew up with a deep bond to the land, a connection passed from generation to generation. My family taught me that the Earth is our mother, that its diversity is the root of our happiness. We all belong to mother Earth”
On the 26th March 2025, Coppieters Foundation recognised Elisa Loncón Antileo with the Coppieters Award for her exceptional contribution to the democratic defense of collective rights of the Mapuche people as well as to the ideals of peace and diversity.
The event, hosted at the iconic Brussels’ Grote Mark, gathered a large crowd of policy makers, members of the European Parliament, civil society, academics and media correspondants that acknowledged Elisa Loncon Antileo for the values she embodies: resilience, integrity, empathy, and the pursuit of justice.
Antonia Luciani, President of Coppieters foundation adressed the attendees to present Elisa Loncón.
Luciani underlined her role as a a Mapuche linguist and indigenous rights activist in Chile. Also her role as one of the representatives of the Mapuche people for the Chilean Constitutional Convention in 2021. Following in the inauguration of the body, Loncón was elected President of the Constitutional Convention and played a crucial role in defining and imagining the future of the country.
It is also worth noting she was part of the Ad Mapu cultural organization and the Aukiñ Wallmapu Ngulam (AWNg or Consejo de Todas las Tierras in Spanish) where she took part in the design of the Mapuche flag, the Wenufoye.
Ana Miranda, Vice Chair of the Delegation to the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly of the European Parliament praised antileo for her courage in the face of adversity and her commitment to justice, her deep understanding of the cultures and traditions of the Mapuche people and her defense of political action that has climate and sustainability at the core, making a strong connection between cultures and languages and respect for environment.
2022 Coppieters Awards recipient, Anders Eriksson, Former minister of the Alands Parliament also stressed the importance of Antileo as symbol, as someone who has the power to inspire generations to come. Not only among the Mapuche, the Chilean or latin American, Also in Europe.
The event concluded with an emotional speech by the awardee, Elisa Loncón Antileo, who recited the poem “Waterfall / Txayeno” in her mother tongue, the Mapugundun, and who recognised the award not only as a recogntion for her as an individual but as a “tribute to the struggle and resistance of Indigenous peoples, to their languages, their cultures, and their right to a future where democracy is truly inclusive, plural, and just—a democracy that does not only include humans but also all other beings of Mother Earth”
In her speech she voiced opposition against “racial discrimination, linguicide, and ecocide” remains of “the legacy of a colonial, anthropocentric, patriarchal, and enslavement-driven system that sacrificed Indigenous peoples and people of color in the name of wealth”
She believes “Democracy, as we know it today, has been trapped in a notion of progress that destroys everything else—it destroys peoples, forests, oceans, entire ecosystems. It has led us to new forms of imbalance, to climate crises”
Loncón Antileo made a final call to advance change “This award is not just a recognition—it is a call to action. A call to stop seeing Indigenous peoples as a burden, and to recognize them as guardians of biodiversity, carriers of ancestral wisdom that can help us restore the balance we have lost. It is also an award for hope—the hope of recovering our lands and reforesting them with native species so that life and water may return”
“Indigenous languages are not merely tools of communication. They are gateways to other ways of being, to understand we are not above the earth but we belong to it”
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This award and the Coppieters Foundation is financially supported by the European Parliament. The European Parliament is not liable for the content of the event nor for the opinions of the speakers at the awards ceremony.
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