Urbanisation and transformation of indigenous resource management: the case of Upper Rio Negro (Brazil)

Abstract

Indigenous resource management is transforming in the face of urbanisation in Amazonia. We wonder how land tenure arrangements feature a new kind of resource management in peri-urban areas. Data were obtained from ethnographic and agro-economic interviews combined with a geographic information system analysis of population and land tenure distribution nearby Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira, Northwest Amazonia. The territories of each indigenous village are composed by many kinds of land use rights, ranging from exclusive ownership to common property. In the peri-urban area, private property has become the main land use right. But most of indigenous families resort to a multi-sited land use in rural-urban areas. The multi-sited pattern is associated with diversification of land use rights in the same households and extended families. These innovations reveal the adaptation of indigenous resource management.