Indigenous Territories Research Articles

Community Tourism and Indigenous Territory Defense: The Case of San Miguel del Bala in the Bolivian Amazon

Summary In Bolivia, the Madidi National Park is home to the Tacana Indigenous Community “San Miguel del Bala,” which, within the framework of the plurinational process, obtained its title as a Community Territory of Origin in 2021. Concurrently, during the 1990s, the government began establishing the first protected areas, adopting regulations with a primary focus on biodiversity conservation. In some cases, this led to restrictions and limitations on economic and subsistence activities rooted in ancestral practices. Community-based tourism, implemented by San Miguel del Bala, emerged as one of the few possibilities to alleviate and address these restrictions. Simultaneously, it became a means of revaluing the culture. The overlapping of San Miguel del Bala as a Community Territory of Origin and a protected area involves constitutional rights for shared management, a process that currently has several limitations. Adding to this complex situation is the entrance of extractive projects that contradict conservation regulations and the rights of prior consultation with indigenous populations regarding resource exploitation. As a result, they pose threats to the lives, cultures, and territories of the Tacana. In this context, the development of indigenous community tourism is transforming into a strategy for the defense of ancestral Indigenous territory. Information © The Authors 2024

Indigenous Peoples in French Guiana: will France ever recognize their right to self-determination, land, territory, biodiversity and Free, Prior and Informed Consent?

French Guiana, located in South America, hosts over 10,000 Indigenous Peoples, principally the Kali’na Tileuyu, Lokono and Pahikweneh, Wayãpi, Teko and Wayana people. Despite making up around 4% of the total population, Indigenous Peoples in French Guiana continue to face systematic challenges in being able to fully enjoy their human rights and rights as Indigenous Peoples. As an overseas territory of France, French Guiana falls under the governance of France and is fully integrated as an overseas department, separate from other overseas territories such as New Caledonia. This full integration has classified Indigenous Peoples as French People, making it not only difficult to get estimates of the actual number of Indigenous Peoples in French Guiana as the French Constitution prohibits ethnic statistics, but also prevent the ability of Indigenous Peoples to obtain their right to self-determination and control over their own land as provided in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Therefore, this paper will discuss the violations of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples committed by France that hinders their attainment to their fundamental freedoms and basic human rights. To do so, this paper will firstly begin by discussing the implementation of the UNDRIP in French Guiana in reference to several articles. In explaining the various articles, it will demonstrate how the French government’s recent actions continue to lead to the destruction of Indigenous territories and threaten their survival. Moreover, this paper will focus on articles 3, 10, 25, 29 which pertain to the right to self-determination, the right to land and territories, and the right to protect biodiversity. These rights alongside the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) should allow Indigenous Peoples to exercise control over decisions that essentially affect not only their way of life but also their existence, particularly considering the history of Indigenous Peoples that have frequently been the “first victims of development activities.”

“The Last Agricultural Frontier” – Piauí, Brazil: Agrarian Issues, Agribusiness, and the Gamela Indigenous Territory

This research paper investigates the confrontation faced by the Gamela indigenous community, located in the Cerrado biome, in the southern region Piauí State in Norteastern Brazil, between agrarian issues and agribusiness. The territory in this area is considered to be the country’s last agricultural frontier. Self-recognition and self-organization of the Gamela people in their struggle for the demarcation of Indigenous territory, and gaining titles to the land, are key to overcoming the invisibility of Indigenous people in Piauí that has been imposed by historiography and official policies. The article highlights the existence of maneuvering done by agribusiness, with the participation of the state, to harm the rights of Indigenous peoples and nature. Este trabalho de pesquisa examina o confronto enfrentado pela comunidade indígena Gamela, localizada no bioma do Cerrado, região sul do estado do Piauí, no Nordeste do Brasil, entre as questões agrárias e o agronegócio. O território desta área é considerado a última fronteira agrícola do país. O autorreconhecimento e a auto-organização do povo Gamela em sua luta pela demarcação do território indígena e pela conquista de títulos de terra são fundamentais para superar a invisibilidade dos povos indígenas no Piauí que tem sido imposta pela historiografia e pelas políticas oficiais. O artigo destaca a existência de manobras do agronegócio, com a participação do Estado, para prejudicar os direitos dos povos indígenas e da natureza.

An elemental ethics for artificial intelligence: water as resistance within AI’s value chain

AbstractResearch and activism have increasingly denounced the problematic environmental record of the infrastructure and value chain underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). Water-intensive data centres, polluting mineral extraction and e-waste dumping are incontrovertibly part of AI’s footprint. In this article, I turn to areas affected by AI-fuelled environmental harm and identify an ethics of resistance emerging from local activists, which I term ‘elemental ethics’. Elemental ethics interrogates the AI value chain’s problematic relationship with the elements that make up the world, critiques the undermining of local and ancestral approaches to nature and reveals the vital and quotidian harms engendered by so-called intelligent systems. While this ethics is emerging from grassroots and Indigenous groups, it echoes recent calls from environmental philosophy to reconnect with the environment via the elements. In empirical terms, this article looks at groups in Chile resisting a Google data centre project in Santiago and lithium extraction (used for rechargeable batteries) in Lickan Antay Indigenous territory, Atacama Desert. As I show, elemental ethics can complement top-down, utilitarian and quantitative approaches to AI ethics and sustainable AI as well as interrogate whose lived experience and well-being counts in debates on AI extinction.

The potential for Indigenous-led conservation in urbanized landscapes in Canada

Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) are an important pathway and governance system for area-based conservation led by Indigenous Peoples. While IPCAs have been established across rural and northern regions of Canada, they have received little attention in urbanized landscapes, even though all of Canada’s urban areas coincide with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis territory (and thereby underlying Indigenous jurisdiction) and the majority of Indigenous Peoples in the country live in urban centers. Canada’s federal government is in the process of establishing six new urban national parks and has committed to working with local Indigenous governments and organizations in parks planning. This study examined the potential for strengthening Indigenous participation in urban parks planning, governance, and management, including the establishment of new urban Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (UIPCAs). The results of spatial analyses of urban Indigenous territory, a review of relevant domestic and international policy and interviews with local Indigenous conservation leaders illuminate the potential for new forms of urban conservation governance that are grounded in Indigenous rights and responsibilities and reflective of Indigenous knowledge systems and biocultural priorities. However, it remains to be seen how urban Indigenous-led conservation, such as UIPCAs, can fit and operate within proposed government urban conservation initiatives, such as Canada’s Urban National Parks Program, which do not currently foreground Indigenous-led conservation in the governance of urban green space.

Settler urbanism, emotional geographies, and Indigenous planning in Ecuadorian Amazonia

Affects and emotions serve as tools of governance in settler urbanism, facilitating colonial dispossession and control of Indigenous land. Drawing on modernist logics, housing projects in indigenous territory seek to instill fixity and urban orders on mobile Indigenous populations through the management of fear and uncertainty. Here we examine the production of emotions associated with the development of the Pañacocha Millennium Community, a public housing project in the Petroamazonas oilfields of what was once Indigenous Kichwa territory in Ecuadorian Amazonia. We draw on research in Indigenous planning, the geographies of emotion, and critical urban studies to demonstrate the emotional impacts of the imposition of colonial governmental logics of housing production in Indigenous lands. At the same time, we examine the limitations of settler urbanist governance through emotion by documenting the embodied Indigenous relations with land, housing, and mobility captured in the concept territorio cuerpo-tierra, which has led to various forms of resistance and avoidance to the housing project. The case of the Pañacocha Millennium Community illuminates the role of emotion in urban planning and settler urbanism, in particular, and contributes to emerging work in Indigenous and decolonial planning.

Rematriation and climate justice: Intersections of indigenous health and place

Indigenous peoples shoulder a disproportionate burden of risk posed by climate change and associated environmental shifts. Simultaneously, Indigenous communities are recognized as arbiters of planetary health and climate resilience due to their interdependence with local ecosystems, traditional lifeways and Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge(s) (ITEKs) that inform adaptation and mitigation programming. Accordingly, Indigenous Peoples protect and steward 80% of the global biodiversity, while only inhabiting 22% of the earth's surface, and comprising only 5% of the earth's global population [1]. Yet, climate resilience often disregards opportunities for Indigenous communities to explore reparative frameworks that seek to heal the social and ecological determinants responsible for climate-related vulnerabilities associated with histories of colonial subjugation. This manuscript offers critical insights and Indigenous perspectives on climate justice, while redressing the intersection of place-based determinants of Indigenous health, sovereignty and self-determination, with ancestral land-based practices of birthing justice and rematriation of Indigenous territories. As Indigenous communities grapple with land dispossession and confinement - rematriation, ancestral remembrance and reciprocity offer novel insights on the critical relationship to territorial homelands and the sanctity of place to Indigenous health. In closing, the authors explore opportunities for decolonizing relationships to place from climate justice perspectives, while discussing a case of rematriation and healing at Bdóte, the place of genesis for Dakota Peoples, also known as Minneapolis and Saint Paul, MN.

‘Esta carretera nos atraviesa’: roadbuilding and mapping the cuerpo-territorio of Amazonian Indigenous girls in Bolivia

Transnational economic dynamics in which China is increasingly a pacesetter have been widely analyzed as macro-structural processes, rather than in the territories, lives, and bodies of those who experience their effects in an intimate way. This article charts the experiences of Indigenous girls from the Multi-Ethnic Indigenous Territory (TIM) in the Bolivian Amazon undergoing the construction of a highway by a Chinese company. I analyze the collective feminist body-mapping of three cuerpo-territorio maps made by Indigenous girls about the transformations brought by ­infrastructural development in their territory. This community-centered approach employs body-maps to trace the girls’ feelings of joy, hope, fear, and sorrow as affective navigational coordinates of their community. Putting Indigenous feminist theory in conversation with scholarship on the affective turn and feminist political ecology, I argue for an understanding of cuerpo-territorio as an amalgamation in which Cartesian notions of internal/external, reason/emotion, and objective/subjective are destabilized. This case study centers sensible and extra-linguistic registers to attend to the affective circulations of embodied spatialities that are of interest to feminist and Indigenous geographies. Interrogating the embodied geographies interwoven in global dynamics of power from the girls’ partial perspectives, this article interrupts monolithic accounts of life in the Amazon during construction, and traces a spatial roadmap of living relationally with territory instead.

The conflict between Rights of Nature and mining in Ecuador: Implications of the Los Cedros Cloud Forest case for biodiversity conservation

Abstract Global emergence of Rights of Nature (RoN) has gained momentum since Ecuador became the first country to constitutionally recognize it in 2008. The shift from perceiving nature as an object, to granting it legal subjecthood, can revolutionize protection of ecological systems. In 2021, Ecuador's Constitutional Court issued a landmark ruling, halting mining in the Los Cedros Protected Forest. Three pillars form the basis for legal protection of Los Cedros: (i) the right to timely, Free Prior Informed Environmental Consultation, (ii) application of the Precautionary Principle in risk to RoN, and (iii) the Right to Water. We analyse the Court ruling to identify legal frameworks applied then map and rank mining risk to other protected forests, Indigenous territories, unprotected native ecosystems, biodiversity and areas of water resource conflict to determine potential scale of conflict between mining and RoN. 7813 mining concessions of 22,812km2 overlay 9.2% of Ecuadorian mainland, 2323 concessions (29.7%) overlap 16,081km2 of protected forest (4781 km2, 20%), Indigenous territory (6473 km2, 8%) and native vegetation outside protected areas and Indigenous territories (13,390 km2, 9%). With 80% of their protected forests at risk from large‐scale mining, the most impacted Indigenous communities are the Shuar. Synthesis and applications: The Los Cedros legal case in Ecuador sets a precedent for using RoN to challenge mining in 4781 km2 of similar Protected Forest, with potential to protect an additional 16,081 km2 of Indigenous lands and biologically important ecosystems. However, lack of biological data for these areas will necessitate extensive data collection, possibly through community‐empowering citizen science. Our study emphasizes the urgent need to integrate indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge (ITEK), law and ecology. We propose a new transdisciplinary field of ‘ecological forensics’ to support nature protection within the RoN framework. Our research also identifies areas where RoN could effectively protect nature and that are likely to be of high investment risk for the mining industry. The final recommendation is to reconsider mining concessions in Ecuador, especially in ecologically sensitive areas, Indigenous territories, high biodiversity areas, and regions with water resource conflicts, to maintain ecological integrity and social harmony. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Value orientations toward wild meat in Guyana are determined by gender, ethnicity, and location

IntroductionUnderstanding what drives differences in values toward wild meat is important for developing legislation and behavioral change campaigns that promote sustainable use. Value orientations (VOs) underly behavior. VOs are influenced by personal (e.g., gender, generation), social (e.g., media, family), location (e.g., rural versus urban), and experience determinants. In Guyana, an ethnic diverse nation in South America, the national hunting laws have recently been instated. The wildlife management agency is rolling out a behavioral change campaign in collaboration with a sustainable use initiative. To support this campaign, we evaluated VOs toward wild meat across Guyana.MethodsApplying Multiple Correspondence Analysis and generalized linear models to data from interviews, we examined location, personal, and societal determinants for their influence on these VOs and explored how VOs translated into behavior, specifically wild meat consumption frequency.ResultsLocation (Indigenous and coastal: rural, town, urban), intertwined with ethnicity, and gender showed the strongest associations with variation in VOs. Respondents from Indigenous territories expressed mostly positive VOs compared to coastal Guyanese. Women expressed more neutral or negative, and more negative biocentric VOs compared to men, and this difference was largest among Indigenous but non-existent in urban sites. Negative anthropocentric VOs toward wild meat consistently grouped together and dominated among those not consuming wild meat. Highest consumption was seen among those expressing positive materialistic VOs. Positive anthropocentric VOs were associate with intermediate consumption frequencies and most typical for men. Those expressing negative values toward wild meat based on biocentric orientations toward wildlife consumed wild meat, but rarely.DiscussionOur results direct behavioral change efforts to men on the coast who consume wild meat for enjoyment at bars, restaurants, or family events. Based on our study, positive messaging promoting the coexistence between consumption of mostly resilient species and caring about wildlife would be well-received to support sustainable use policies.

When the Forest and the Rivers is Home – Managing Indigenous Territory and Settler Relations in North Eastern Nicaragua

When the Forest and the Rivers is Home – Managing Indigenous Territory and Settler Relations in North Eastern Nicaragua

Capacity of community health centers to treat snakebite envenoming in indigenous territories of the Brazilian Amazon

IntroductionThe deaths from and morbidities associated with snakebites - amputations, loss of function in the limb, visible scarring or tissue damage - have a vast economic, social, and psychological impact on indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon, especially children, and represent a real and pressing health crisis in this population. Snakebite clinical and research experts have therefore proposed expanding antivenom access from only hospitals to include the community health centers (CHC) located near and within indigenous communities. However, there are no studies examining the capacity of CHCs to store, administer, and manage antivenom treatment. In response to this gap, the research team calling for antivenom decentralization developed and validated an expert-based checklist outlining the minimum requirements for a CHC to provide antivenom. MethodsThe objective of this study was thus to survey a sample of CHCs in indigenous territories and evaluate their capacity to provide antivenom treatment according to this accredited checklist. The checklist was administered to nurses and doctors from 16 CHCs, two per indigenous district in Amazonas/Roraima states. ResultsOur results can be conceptualized into three central findings: 1) most CHCs have the capacity to provide antivenom treatment, 2) challenges to capacity are human resources and specialized items, and 3) antivenom decentralization is feasible and appropriate in indigenous communities. ConclusionDecentralization would provide culturally and contextually appropriate care accessibility to a historically marginalized and underserved population of the Brazilian Amazon. Future studies should examine optimal resource allocation in indigenous territories and develop an implementation strategy in partnership with indigenous leaders. Beyond the indigenous population, the checklist utilized could be applied to community health centers treating the general population and/or adapted to other low-resource settings.

The Smallpox Chiefs: Bioterrorism and the Exercise of Power in the Pacific Northwest

Abstract Although there has been much writing and speculation on the deliberate use of smallpox as a tool of genocide, this article documents the use of the bluff threat of spreading smallpox as a tool of power and manipulation in the early days of European trade and settlement in the Pacific Northwest. By documenting ten cases when a bluff threat was used, the article argues that it was a common strategy of Europeans when they felt threatened or thwarted. Because it was compatible with existing Indigenous beliefs about the spread of disease, it was highly credible and was occasionally used by Indigenous people to manipulate others. While Europeans in this era did not actually have the power to control smallpox, the fact that outbreaks of the disease often occurred following a threat to spread it gave credence to the threat and to today’s widespread belief that some or all of the epidemics were deliberate genocide. Recognizing bluff threat bioterrorism as a tool in the newcomer’s arsenal is essential to understanding how the heavily outnumbered and out-gunned newcomers were so often able to manipulate Indigenous people and then establish the settlements that eventually evolved into full scale colonial occupations of Indigenous territory.

Clinical, Laboratory and Neurodevelopmental Findings in Children from the Yanomami-Ninam Population Chronically Exposed to Methylmercury.

Despite legal safeguards, the Yanomami community faces challenges such as unauthorized incursions by gold miners, resulting in environmental degradation, particularly from mercury. This jeopardizes the health and food security of indigenous individuals, especially due to the consumption of contaminated fish. Ethnic and racial disparities persist in indigenous healthcare, marked by troubling health indicators such as malnutrition, anemia, and infectious diseases. This cross-sectional study, conducted in October 2022 in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory in the Amazon Forest, Brazil, presented clinical, laboratory, and neurodevelopmental findings in Yanomami children chronically exposed to methylmercury. The results revealed that Yanomami children exhibited weights and heights below expectations (median Z-scores of -1.855 for weight for age and -2.7 for height for age), a high prevalence of anemia (25%), low vaccination coverage (15%), and low IQ (average 68.6). The Total Hair Mercury (Total Hg) levels ranged from 0.16 µg/g to 10.20 µg/g (mean: 3.30 µg/g; median: 3.70 µg/g). Of 117 children tested, 93 children (79.4%) had levels ≥ 2.0 µg/g (had no significant difference between sex). Among the 58 children for whom it was possible to estimate the Total Intelligence Quotient (TIQ), the average value was 68.6, ranging from 42 to 92 points (median: 69.5; standard deviation: 10.5). Additionally, the lowest score on the IQ test was associated with 5 times the risk of having high levels of mercury in their hair, 2,5 fold the risk of having an older age, and almost 8 times the risk of consuming fish, adjusting for nut consumption. Notwithstanding the study's limitations, results suggest that mercury contamination from illegal mining activities on indigenous lands may negatively impact neurodevelopment in older indigenous children, particularly those fish consumers, despite the inherent benefits of fish consumption. Addressing other socio-environmental concerns is crucial for enhancing the overall health of the population.

Lumbisí and the suburban (re)colonisation of Quito’s valleys: de-facto housing policies and indigenous dwelling struggles in plurinational Ecuador

Building upon ongoing engagement with leaders, advocates, and inhabitants of Lumbisí and other communal territories in Quito’s Metropolitan District, this contribution exposes the city’s suburbanisation as state-sponsored (re)colonisation. Through qualitative socio-spatial analysis, we unpack the relation between Quito’s de-facto housing policy and Lumbisí’s dwelling struggles with three main aims: (1) to unravel the involvement of housing and land policies in the predatory transformation of Quito’s north-eastern valleys; (2) to illustrate their impact on Indigenous dispossession, elimination, and assimilation; and (3) to uncover how dwelling forms elicit and articulate dissent. Setting the grammars of dissent mobilised by local, regional, and national constituencies of Ecuador’s Indigenous Movement in dialogue with settler colonial theory, we reposition ongoing struggles within enduring colonial trajectories. Our case study of Lumbisí complexifies existing frameworks of gentrification, neoliberal urbanisation and capital accumulation. It foregrounds how Quito’s de-facto housing policy systematically relies on communal territories to externalise demands for land and labour, instrumentalising them as ‘informal’ settlements or ‘vacant’ land to extract ‘affordable’ housing and ‘natural’ assets. The (re)colonisation of Quito’s north-eastern valleys thus unfolds as the ongoing physical and ontological occupation of Indigenous territories. Within this context, comunas simultaneously absorb transformations and articulate dissent.

Insertion of obstetric ultrasound equipment in Xavante indigenous territory

This article aims to publicize the use of ultrasound by obstetric nurses during prenatal consultations with Xavante indigenous women, which has provided results with minimal errors and offered unprecedented quality to the population using this service. This is a descriptive and exploratory study, approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Mato Grosso, with opinion 5.509.452. It is concluded that implementing ultrasound in the Xavante indigenous territory, in the prenatal care developed by the obstetric nurse will provide better indicators and produce actions for the quality and humanization of care.

Acumulación por desposesión del territorio ancestral y resistencia del pueblo indígena Yshir de Paraguay

This study presents a characterization of the types of accumulation by dispossession existing in the Eshma ancestral territory of the Yshir indigenous people of Paraguay, which is currently in the hands of a foreign livestock company. The paper also seeks to make the Yshir resistance in defense of their communal lands visible. This case study has a qualitative methodological design and research techniques that combine field notes with in-depth interviews with Yshir political and spiritual leaders. As a result, various types of capital accumulation by appropriation are noted, which are resisted by the Yshir indigenous communities in an organized manner. Accumulation occurs by fencing communal lands; privatization and foreignization of indigenous territory; deforestation; territorial division, and weakening of both social and productive practices. Due to fencing, the indigenous people establish an organized resistance in defense of their territory, establishing alliances with non-governmental entities and using the committed support of professionals in law and anthropology. The above undoubtedly represents a good practice that should be made visible—to eventually be replicated—for its potential to curb the negative effects of extractive activities and the restitution of lands that historically and by right belong to indigenous populations.

Understanding the impact of mobility on Plasmodium spp. carriage in an Amazon cross-border area with low transmission rate.

Despite the large reduction in malaria incidence in the last decade, the last kilometre to elimination is often the hardest, especially in international border areas. This study investigated the impact of mobility on Plasmodium spp. carriage in people living in a cross-border area in Amazonia with a low malaria transmission rate. We implemented a longitudinal ancillary study in the French Guiana town of St. Georges de l'Oyapock, which is located on the border with Brazil. It was based on data from two transversal surveys performed in October 2017 and October 2018. Data were collected on peri-domestic mobility for food-producing activities, and longer-distance mobility in high-risk areas. Participants were screened for Plasmodium spp. carriage using PCR tests, and treated if positive. Vector density around a participant's home was estimated using a previously published model based on remote sensing and meteorological data. The association between Plasmodium spp. carriage and mobility was analysed using a generalized additive mixed model. A total of 1,192 inhabitants, aged between 0 and 92 years old, were included. Median age was 18 years in 2017 (IQR [8;35]). Plasmodium spp. prevalence in the study population was 7% in 2017 (n = 89) and 3% in 2018 (n = 35). Plasmodium spp. carriage was independently associated with i) travel to the adjoining Oiapoque Indigenous Territories in Brazil (OR = 1.76, p = 0.023), ii) the estimated vector density around a participant's home (High versus Low risk OR = 4.11, p<0.001), iii) slash-and-burn farming (OR = 1.96, p = 0.013), and iv) age (p = 0.032). Specific surveillance systems and interventions which take into account different types of mobility are needed in cross-border areas to achieve and maintain malaria elimination (e.g., reactive case detection and treatment in the places visited).

A new species of the Scinax cruentomma group (Anura: Hylidae) from the Ucayali River basin of Loreto, Peru.

We describe a new species of the Scinax cruentomma species group, with a red streak in the iris and a weakly bilobate vocal sac. It is known from oligotrophic soils in the sedimentary basin of the Ucayali River near Jenaro Herrera (province of Requena, Peru) and Ro Blanco (buffer zone of the Matses Indigenous territory and reserve). The new species can be distinguished from the other species of the S. cruentomma group by its small snout-vent length, body and iris color patterns, weakly bilobate vocal sac, myological characters, and the number of notes and pulses of the advertisement call. It is morphologically most similar to S. strussmannae, from which the advertisement call, nostril, canthus rostralis, and loreal region can distinguish it.

Exploring settler-Indigenous engagement in food systems governance

Within food systems governance spaces, civil society organizations (CSOs) play important roles in addressing power structures and shaping decisions. In Canada, CSO food systems actors increasingly understand the importance of building relationships among settler and Indigenous peoples in their work. Efforts to make food systems more sustainable and just necessarily mean confronting the realities that most of what is known as Canada is unceded Indigenous territory, stolen land, land acquired through coercive means, and/or land bound by treaty between specific Indigenous groups and the Crown. CSOs that aim to build more equitable food systems must thus engage with the ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, learn/unlearn colonial histories, and build meaningful relationships with Indigenous peoples. This paper explores how settler-led CSOs engage with Indigenous communities and organizations in their food systems governance work. The research draws on 71 semi-structured interviews with CSO leaders engaged in food systems work from across Canada. Our analysis presents an illustrative snapshot of the complex and ongoing processes of settler-Indigenous engagement, where many settler-led CSOs aim to work more closely with Indigenous communities and organizations. However, participants also recognize that most existing engagements remain insufficient. We share CSOs’ practices, tensions, and lessons learned as reflections for scholars and practitioners interested in the continuous journey of building settler-Indigenous partnerships and reimagining more just and sustainable food systems, work which requires iterative and critically reflexive learning.