a weaver holding berries used to make dyes

The Spinners at the 'End of the World'

Known as hilanderas, the group uses methods of working with sheep's wool that have been passed down among women for generations.

Esther Condori, one of the "Hilanderas del Fin del Mundo," holds a local plant in her hand.
Photograph by Luján Agusti, National Geographic
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At the southernmost tip of South America, a group of women are working together to keep alive their cultural tradition of spinning and weaving wool for clothing.

These women call themselves hilanderas del fin de mundo, or “spinners at the end of the world,” and they spin, stain, and weave local sheep’s wool in Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego region, where the process has been passed down through generations of families.

The women are mostly between 40 and 80 years old, though some of their younger siblings have shown an interest in learning and participated in the process. In many cases, the women learned techniques for spinning and weaving sheep’s wool when they were young, making their own clothing when they

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