Lately, in Latin America, there has been a greater concern for the integration of local communities in the decisions about how they should be represented in museums. This process has been noted mainly with indigenous communities, clearly changing the Western paradigms on how to expose material culture of the past and on the representation of people with a different cultural matrix. With this text we intend to present two recent exhibitions held in Santiago de Chile about Mapuche culture, debating the strategies used by the curators to show the objects of this indigenous community and the complex relationship between museums and archaeological heritage.

Key words:
Mapuche archaeological objects; indigenous museology; material culture; representation of the past