In Chile the approaches to protection and management of glaciers are merely focused on a technical and scientific categorization, hindering other types of knowledge linked to territorial safeguarding. Not so much is known on practices of adaptation, relations, meanings and knowledge that indigenous populations have constructed around the Andean glaciers. Specifically, in the Andes of southern Chile, starting from participatory action research developed in the ancestral territory of the Mapuche people, where the Pichillancahue glacier is located, the knowledge and practices of such people in relation to the glacier have been studied. The objective is to articulate them in a strategy for the protection of their biocultural heritage. In such a strategy they merge and resignify scientific knowledge with their own kimün (knowledge), revealing local responses and the resilient potential of mapuche communities related to this glacier. All this, in a territory that faces conflicts and diverse territorial dynamics, which are a product of climate change, water stress and the expansion of capital through new axes of accumulation such as mass tourism.