Ángela Loij

Ángela Loij López (c. 1900 – 18 May 1974), baptized as Ángela Gómez, was an Argentine-Chilean woman considered to be the last surviving individual of full-blooded Selk'nam (Ona) descent, an indigenous group that resided in Tierra del Fuego.

As a young woman, she married Nelson Qànqòt, a Haush baptized by missionaries as Toribio, with whom she had two daughters and a son: Víctor Nelson (born 1919), Laura Soto (born 1922), and Luisa Nelson (born 1926). She participated in a traditional Hain ceremony documented in 1924 by Austrian ethnologist Martin Gusinde. During the late 1930s, she joined missionaries and was baptized to leave her conflictive relationship with her husband. All three of her children died in 1938 of tuberculosis without further descendants. In 1955, she married José Isaías Ule, a young Chilean worker who died in 1969, after which she inherited his house, where she lived on until he died.

In her later years, she was studied by anthropologist Anne Chapman. Loij was born at the Estancia Sara ranch, north of Río Grande, where her father, Loij, worked as a shepherd. She had one brother, Pascual. Her grandniece, Amalia Gudiño, became a nurse and politician, serving as deputy of Argentina, becoming the first indigenous woman to hold said position in her country. Loij was found dead in her home in May 1974, victim of a stroke she suffered at dawn. A school in the Río Grande Department bears her name.