Cristina Calderón, Date of Birth, Place of Birth
TweetCristina Calderón
last known speaker of Yaghan language
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Puerto Williams, Magellan and the Chilean Antarctic Region, Chile
About Cristina Calderón
- Cristina Calderón (born May 24, 1928 at Robalo, Puerto Williams on Navarino Island, Chile) is the last living full-blooded Yaghan person after the death of her 84 year-old sister Úrsula in 2005.
- By 2004, Calderón (often referred to as simply "Abuela", Spanish for "grandmother") and her sister-in-law Emelinda Acuña were the only two remaining native speakers of the Yaghan language.
- With her granddaughter Cristina Zárraga and her sister Úrsula Calderón she published a book of Yaghan stories called Hai Kur Mamashu Shis (I Want to Tell You a Story) in 2005.
- Zárraga, along with her husband Oliver Vogel, published Yagankuta, a dictionary and storybook of the Yaghan language, in 2010, based on interviews with Calderón.As of May 2017, she was still alive and residing in her hometown of Puerto Williams.
- She is the mother of ten children and grandmother to 19 as of 2017.Cristina Calderón has been officially declared Illustrious Daughter of the Magallanes Region and Chilean Antarctica.
- She also has been recognized by the National Council of Culture and the Arts (Chile) as a Living Human Treasure in the framework of the Convention for the Safeguard of Immaterial Heritage, adopted by UNESCO in 2003.
- Likewise, she was nominated to be one of the fifty heroines in the celebration of the Bicentennial of Chile.
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