Indigenous Territories Research Articles

Layers of settler urbanization and indigenous relational place-making: uncovering an ongoing palimpsest

ABSTRACT Cities in settler colonial states imply a continuous settlement in Indigenous territories and on unceded land. With each layer of colonial enterprises, there is also Indigenous resistance to it, which in turn brings on new interruptions and displacements. Each layer relates to previous ones and, as an urban palimpsest, public spaces become multilayered places, with permanent processes of displacements and dispossession and re-territorialization and re-possession. And if the settler colonial city is a useful framework to understand the multiple layers of colonial processes happening in an urban public space, we suggest that the notion of the palimpsest enlightens also the multiple layers of Indigenous presence and continuous place-making as a resistance to these processes.

Rekinning the homeland: Rurality, gender-based genocide, and Indigenous sovereignty in colonial Canada

In the colonial state of Canada, rurality is quintessentially necropolitical, a technology of colonial nation building that has forcibly displaced hundreds of sovereign Indigenous nations to accommodate white occupation. Throughout vast rural social geographies that remain conservative political strongholds, Indigenous peoples living in their ancestral homelands are positioned as contaminants of dignified white rural life and obstacles to food and resource exploitation, agri-industrial expansion, and growing multicultural diversity. Under colonial rural logics, Indigenous bodies are disposable and ungrievable, in deeply gendered and sexualized ways. In this paper, I draw on Achille Mbembé’s concept of necropolitics to examine rural genocide as a form of colonial and neocolonial settler placemaking, with a specific focus on gender-based violence as one form of enacted necropolitics. I examine how stark racial rural inequities precipitate racialized-gendered death by enabling incessant white entitlement to Indigenous lands and bodies, allowing what the United Nations has called the gender-based genocide of Indigenous girls, women, and 2Spirit people to occur with impunity. I then consider the imperial logics of homesteading as a new/old settler tactic emerging under new anthropogenic and pandemic-related pressures, where urbanites seeking rural escapes fuel the colonial appropriation and commodification of sacred Indigenous land-based knowledges while eroding already precarious Indigenous territories. I conclude by exploring how reimplicating increasingly mobile and urbanized Indigenous young people in kinscapes—mobile, temporal circles of relations with their kin and homelands—might fortify vital Indigenous land and body sovereignties and unsettle colonial necropolitical rural ontologies.

A Capitol Orchard

Abstract In the second half of the nineteenth century, the ethnic Japanese (wajin) population of Hokkaido ballooned from roughly sixty thousand residents, primarily living on the island’s southern tip, to more than two million people, scattered across the island. This explosive colonization was part of a global wave of settler colonialism. The wajin colonial regime and the foreign advisers they hired helped turn indigenous Ainu territory into Japan’s first modern colony and one of its most important agricultural breadbaskets, resembling the so-called Neo-Europes of the Anglophone settler world. Hokkaido’s history fits into the framework of ecological imperialism developed by Alfred Crosby and expanded by many scholars since. But the role of city building in processes of ecological imperialism remains understudied. Scholars who do discuss urbanization in the context of ecological imperialism focus on cities’ roles as markets, downplaying their importance as sites of state power and political interventions. In Hokkaido, however, the politics and policies of city building were crucial tools of Japanese ecological imperialism. Colonial authorities built Hokkaido’s capital, Sapporo, as a colonial laboratory, importing ideas from Japan and abroad, recording their experiences in Hokkaido, and ultimately exporting that knowledge to Japan’s later colonies in East Asia.

Indigenous Psychology as a General Science for Escaping the Snares of Psychological Methodolatry.

Contemporary society has blurred the territorial borders that colonialism used to divide nation-states. Information about different peoples that have survived the impact of brutal violence perpetrated for centuries reaches everywhere in the world through information networks and disputes visibility. The modernization of the sciences happened during the period of consolidation of the so-called modern societies, in a process directly linked to the invasion of the indigenous territories of Abya Yala/Pindorama. Contemporary science is descendant of a large-scale colonialist process. The territory of knowledge has been colonized by economic and political interests that put researchers to work for purposes increasingly far from the desired freedom of thought. This paper argues that a escape from the entrapments of psychological methodolatry depends on the implication of a researcher connecting science to ethics, breaking the vicious cycle of reaffirmation of supposed scientific truths when they prove to be insufficient to approach basic human questions.

Urban nullius? Urban Indigenous People and Climate Change

Climate change is impacting cities and urban regions in significant ways, and people living within them must work out how to live with and adapt to the changes they bring. Indigenous peoples are increasingly moving to and living in cities, yet how they experience climate change within them is not understood. While literature explores Indigenous experiences of climate change and how Indigenous knowledge is being used to combat it, this work is geographically located in rural and remote Indigenous territories—not cities. This paper presents the results of a review that sought to find out why this is the case. Our aim was to identify scholarship that discussed how Indigenous people are affected by climate change in cities. To do so, we undertake a narrative literature review, which analyses content to distil key concepts in the literature, which are then presented in the paper to form a narrative. We find a significant gap in the literature addressing Indigenous experiences and voices concerning climate change in cities. We argue that this is due to the ongoing legacy of settler colonization, which has erased Indigenous peoples from urban territories to the extent that even when they are visible, urban Indigenous people are characterized as inauthentic and vulnerable. We call for action to overturn this insidious form of urban nullius to reclaim and assert Indigenous voices on and about climate change and policy in cities.

No evidence of local deforestation leakage from protected areas establishment in Brazil's Amazon and Atlantic Forest

Establishing Protected areas (PAs) could displace or cause ‘leakage’ of deforestation into adjacent areas. Such leakage would potentially offset PAs' conservation effort by jeopardizing forest conservation goals and impeding financial mechanisms such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation - REDD+. Here we investigate forest loss inside PAs' borders and whether leakage occurred following the establishment of new PAs (n = 425) within the Amazon and the Atlantic forests in Brazil between 2004 and 2017. We applied a Before-After-Control-Intervention statistical design with a matching approach to evaluate deforestation leakage from PAs' establishment using a spatial (inside and outside PAs)– temporal (before and after PA establishment) measure of deforestation rates. We also used “Random Forest” to investigate the drivers of the effect of PAs' establishment on their surrounding areas. We found that when PAs' establishment led to reducing deforestation inside their boundaries, their surrounding also experienced a reduction in deforestation (“blockage”). Similarly, when PAs' establishment could not reduce deforestation inside their boundaries, their surroundings also experienced increased deforestation. Such a pattern was most common for Indigenous territories, especially in the deforestation arch in the Amazon. However, we did not find significant evidence for leakage as PAs' surroundings with a significant increase in deforestation were associated with PAs unable to significantly reduce deforestation within their boundaries. Therefore, “leakage” should not limit the establishment of new PAs. Instead, greater investments into reinforcement are needed for existing PAs, with high priority given to Indigenous Territories.

An analysis of fire dynamics in and around indigenous territories and protected areas in a Brazilian agricultural frontier

Sustainable land management is integral to conserving tropical ecosystems and reducing carbon emissions. Human-set fires are part of the land cover change process and are the most common driver of deforestation and carbon emissions in Amazonia. Analyzing the behavior of major fire events provides insight into the effectiveness of current protections. This study aims to quantify the role of Indigenous Territories and Protected Areas (ITPAs) in characterizing anthropogenic fire regimes over the 2020 fire season in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Because of the rapid rate of land cover change and lack of widespread ground validation data in the region, we used a combination of ESA’s Sentinel-5 Precursor Aerosol Index, NASA’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, and high resolution Planet satellite imagery for the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project to analyze spatial and temporal patterns by fire type. ITPAs cover 25% of the study area’s land and contained approximately 20% of significant recorded fires in 2020. Recently deforested areas, forest, grassland, and cropland fires showed varying seasonality and lower frequencies inside ITPAs, but mean fire start dates for all fire types occurred in mid-September. Results suggest that the overall density of major fires is reduced in ITs. PAs only inhibit the density of crop or pastureland fires, but no major fires occurred past 10 km inside their borders. Burn severity of major fires had a weak relationship to distance from ITPAs for some fire types. This study highlights the advantages of near real-time data for individual fire events, provides further evidence of the effect of ITPAs on fire behavior, and demonstrates the importance of adequate protection strategies for mitigating fire activity.

The Interconnectedness of Indigenous Religion and Indigenous Territory: A Case Study of Talang Mamak, Riau

The Constitutional Court Decision 97/2016 emphasizes Bhinneka Tunggal Ika which is the diversity of Indonesia and observed to be another path to rebuild the relationship between the state and the indigenous people, especially concerning the citizenship framework. However, that decision is not enough to guarantee the sustainable reproduction of indigenous people’s religion. This research aimed to showed an interconnection between Indigenous religion and indigenous territory among Talang Mamak people in Riau Province. This research was conducted using qualitative method. There is possibility of tracing the interaction to nature and this implies it is not only a means of subsistence but also has both horizontal and vertical meanings embedded in their indigenous religion narrative. This relationship represents their strong emotional and spiritual connection to nature as well as the foundation to build their identity and form their worldview.

Strategi Komunikasi Lingkungan dalam Pelestarian Hutan Lindung pada Masyarakat Adat di Kenegerian Sentajo Kabupaten Kuantan Singingi

Kenegerian Sentajo protected forest serves as a protector of the community and natural life support systems, regulates water systems, prevents floods, controls erosion, and maintains soil fertility. The management of forest resources by the community is quite unique because it is still communally regulated, which is closely related to the kinship system and leadership of local indigenous peoples. This encourages the formation of strong communication relationships or interactions between communities and their forest resources. However, in reality, the indigenous people of Sentajo Regency have not obeyed the customary rules, which resulted in the forest that was originally preserved has begun to be converted to function by the community. The forest, whose precedence is beautiful, has now partially turned into plantation land and building houses for residents. This study aims to 1) Analyze environmental communication planning in the preservation of the Kenegerian Sentajo protected forest in Kuantan Singingi Regency; 2) Analyze the implementation and evaluation of environmental communication in the preservation of the Kenegerian Sentajo protected forest in Kuantan Singingi Regency. This research uses qualitative methods. Data collection techniques are carried out through interviews, observations, and documentation. Informants totaled 8 (eight) purposively determined persons. The data analysis technique used in this study is carried out in several stages, namely data reduction, data presentation and drawing conclusions, and testing the validity of the data using triangulation. The results of this study show that: First, the planning stage begins with an assessment which includes analyzing the situation and identifying the problem of environmental damage that occurs, Analysis of parties or actors involved, Then, planning which includes developing communication strategies, motivating and mobilizing communities with the division of indigenous territories and the selection of media and communicators. Second, this implementation stage begins with the production stage, which includes the design of the message to be delivered. Furthermore, the implementation stage is in the form of the application of customary norms, the application of socio-cultural values, and community empowerment through tree and rattan planting, their implementation, and documentation after evaluation.

Book Review: Sebastian Garbe (2022) Weaving Solidarity. Decolonial Perspectives on Transnational Advocacy of and with the Mapuche. Transcript Verlag.

Weaving Solidarity (2022) by Sebastian Garbe is a novel and potent contribution to debates on international solidarity and decoloniality. The thread that connects the book’s different chapters is the author’s examination of how the Mapuche, as a transnational and collective actor composed by the Mapuche living in the Indigenous territory of Wallmapuand the Mapuche diaspora living in Europe, produce their own network of solidarity. Contrary to analyses that interpret relations of solidarity in a humanitarian key, i.e. analyses that make a clear distinction between passive receivers of support who are affected by a particular conflict and active agents (external to the conflict) whose moral imperative is to give support, Garbe shows how the Mapuche are not mere receptors of solidarity. On the contrary, the Mapuche themselves have created a design of transnational solidarity since the 1970s, which has neither been fully determined by non-Indigenous givers of support located in the global north, nor fully occupied or saturated by “the conflict” with the Chilean state.

Resistance to petro-hegemony: A three terrains of power analysis of the Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota

In northern Minnesota, the Line 3 tar sands pipeline crosses Indigenous treaty territory, the Mississippi River, and wild rice lakes. Despite the severity of climate crisis and widespread public opposition, Canadian pipeline company Enbridge succeeded in securing permits for, constructing, and ultimately running oil in the pipeline in fall 2021. How was this possible and how did the climate justice movement try to resist? Drawing on participant observation and interviews in the Stop Line 3 movement, this article employs LeQuesne's (2019) concepts of petro-hegemony and carbon rebellion to explain why Line 3 was approved and to assess water protectors' resistance. Analyzing three terrains of power, we find that: 1) the petro-state of Minnesota employed coercion through undemocratic, colonized, and militarized permitting processes and construction; 2) Enbridge manufactured consent through a petro-culture that framed water protectors as dangerous, highlighted economic benefits to rural towns, and co-opted Indigenous voices; and, 3) by overstating its contributions to jobs and taxes, Enbridge tried to secure broad compliance to the pipeline through petro-capitalism, but ultimately failed. Water protectors intervened in all three of these terrains of power by using legal avenues to shake the petro-state, creating cultures to refuse colonialism and embrace climate justice within water protector camps, and building an Indigenous-led renewable energy economy. We contribute a joint analysis of petro-hegemony and carbon rebellion that reveals the need for balanced and stronger resistance in all three terrains of power to stop future petro-projects and dismantle existing petro-infrastructure.

Indigenous Peoples and International Law in the Ecuadorian Amazon

The adoption and ratification of new conventions and treaties under international law designed to protect both Indigenous peoples and the rights of nature have resulted in successful rulings by local, federal, and regional courts in favor of Indigenous groups engaged in class-action suits against their governments. In 2012 and 2019, respectively, the Sarayaku Kichwa and the Huaorani and Cofán peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon won cases against the Ecuadorian government for its lack of consultation on planned oil exploration. Such cases upholding the correct application of the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) under international treaties are rare; more often, Western judicial systems and environmental impact assessments have been used to serve corporate interests, as exemplified by the Aguinda v. Texaco case initiated in 1993 and the planned operations of Andes Petroleum in Orellana province 2019–2020, respectively. Indigenous and non-Western epistemologies tend to be incompatible with state-driven liberal secular capitalism—hence Indigenous efforts to prevent land seizures and the expansion of the extractive frontier into Indigenous territories in the Amazon rainforest have been undermined by the imperatives of modernization/developmentalism. These same forces have stimulated demand for gold, the legal and illegal mining of which, along the Napo river, have caused the contamination of the waters of the Amazon, threatening the health of Indigenous and non-indigenous riverine communities.

Introduction to Critical and Creative Engagements with Petro-Media

The production of oil is imbricated in financial and socio-political systems as well as ways of mediating the worlds in which we live. Like infrastructures used to transport fuel, audio-visual media and other forms of cultural production (museums, poetry, film, visual art) can serve as conduits for ideas about energy, identity, relationships to the nonhuman world, and history. This special issue of Imaginations on “Critical and Creative Engagements with Petro-Media” explores how media has been used to examine petroleum’s place within Canadian and American cultural landscapes as well as oil’s attendant socio-political and economic structures. Given our location on occupied Indigenous territories where we work as researchers and educators, we assert that energy developments are always already implicated within histories of white settlement in North America. Drawing on literary and film studies, energy humanities scholarship, critical museum studies, and a variety of creative and analytical research methods, the contributors to this issue theorize contemporary and historical practices of corporate petro-media alongside creative interventions to trace the interlacing of oil, media, and settler colonialism.

FPIC, international law, social space, and indigenous territories in FPIC during extractive projects in Latin America. A romantic or tragic story?

The development and implementation of the free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) can be understood both as a “romantic” and “tragic” story, using a sharp reflection made by Susan Marks (2012) regarding Human Rights. Following this idea, this essay intends to analyse the main developments of FPIC international human rights in the last three decades (the successful story) and the clear and strong limitations of its use in Latin America (the tragic side to it).Despite the fact that the romantic narrative tells us about a progressive recognition and protection of indigenous rights in international law, especially with instruments such as the ILO Convention 169 (ILO-C169) and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), these advances have been and are currently deactivated. Through the revision of postcolonial literature and an analysis of relevant research in Latin America, this essay explains how the supposed progress is clearly limited by imbalances in the history of international law itself and in the territorial governance system that is configured in large-scale extractive projects, where FPIC is applied or not. In this manner, despite apparently overcoming colonial times against indigenous peoples, the permanent structure of neo-colonization of indigenous territory prevails for an ever-growing global market.

Protecting Indigenous Collective Land Property in Indonesia under International Human Rights Norms

This essay examines the applicability of international human rights instruments as the legal basis to protect indigenous rights to land, territories, and natural resources to non-ratification countries of the Convention on indigenous peoples’ rights, especially to the Indonesian context. In the last few decades, the United Nations has developed and recognized the rights of indigenous peoples, including rights to their ancestral lands, territories, and resources. These rights have been stipulated in several instruments, such as the ILO Conventions No.169 and UNDRIP. Nevertheless, most Asian and African countries have not ratified the Treaty, including Indonesia. Consequently, the rights failed to be adopted into national policies, which the ratification is a pre-condition before came into force through the national regulations. Indonesia also doubted the exclusive rights of land, territories, and resources traditionally owned by indigenous peoples. Legally, lands, territories, and resources are controlled by the States, as mentioned in Article 33 of the 1945 Constitutional law. Economically, Indonesia relies on land, territories, and natural resources to boost its national revenues. To achieve this aim, the expropriation of indigenous land and territories often occurs through land concession policy for private or state-owned companies. As a result, land tenure and social conflict were common phenomena from the New Order Regime until the current day. This conflict spreads across the country from the west part (Sumatra) to the east of Indonesia (Papua). Therefore, author argues that applying general international human rights instruments will be an alternative approach in protecting the fundamental rights related to their traditional land rights in the Indonesian context.

Amazonian indigenous territories as reservoirs of biodiversity: The army ants of Santa Sofia (Amazonas – Colombia)

The Amazon basin is undergoing processes of global change that threaten one of the planet’s greatest sources of biological and cultural richness. Among different conservation strategies, indigenous reserves play a key role by reducing the impact of factors such as the deforestation caused by the expansion of the agricultural frontier. Despite the demonstrated importance of these indigenous territories, there is a lack of studies evaluating their contribution to the regional diversity in Colombia, especially for invertebrate groups. By surveying indigenous territories for the first time in the Amazonas department, we investigated the army ant fauna inhabiting different land use types: forests; “chagras” in different stages of regeneration; and pastures. In a sampling plot that represents just 0.0014 % of the department’s area, four genera and eight army ants species were recorded, representing 47 % of known species in the Amazonas department and 18 % in Colombia. Our sampling revealed three new records for the department and Neivamyrmex diana as a new record for the country. Mature forests harbored six species, while the chagras system retained up to five species. Notably, when placing our results in a national context, we revealed several country regions and departments (e.g., Córdoba, Sucre, Vaupés) that presented limited or no information on army ant diversity. Our results provide justification for the continuous evaluation, monitoring and conservation of indigenous reserves, based not only on their demonstrated cultural and ancestral importance but to their potential to retain high biodiversity.

Overlooked jaguar guardians: Indigenous territories and range-wide conservation of a cultural icon.

Indigenous territories (ITs) are an integral component of global conservation strategies. We evaluate the range-wide overlap of ITs and the distribution of the jaguar (Panthera onca), a Neotropical apex predator with considerable cultural significance among Indigenous Peoples. We quantified overlap between protected areas (PAs) and ITs among: (1) jaguar range, (2) the species' core habitats, known as Jaguar Conservation Units (JCUs), and (3) corridors connecting JCUs. We further evaluated deforestation rates between 2000 and 2020 among protected, unprotected, and indigenous portions of JCUs and corridors and compared jaguar density estimates among these land tenures. Our results indicate that ITs overlap 27.7% of jaguar range. South American JCUs and corridors, which comprise ~ 94% of jaguar distribution, experienced significantly less deforestation where ITs intersected PAs. We documented an unbalanced ratio of jaguar density estimates between indigenous and non-indigenous areas, highlighting the need for more representative sampling. Collaborative approaches for jaguar conservation, informed and guided by indigenous knowledge, can support more inclusive and effective monitoring that reduces dependence on external support.

Food profile of Yanomami indigenous children aged 6 to 59 months from the Brazilian Amazon, according to the degree of food processing: a cross-sectional study.

The current study aimed to characterise the food profile of Yanomami indigenous children according to the degree of food processing and its associated factors. This is a cross-sectional study with Yanomami indigenous children aged 6 to 59 months. Socio-demographic, maternal and infant data were collected through a standardised questionnaire. The food profile was obtained by using a list of thirty-four foods to verify the child's consumption of these foods on the day preceding the interview. Foods were classified according to the degree of processing based on the NOVA system (in natura or minimally processed, processed culinary ingredients, processed and ultra-processed). In natura and minimally processed foods were subdivided into 'regional' and 'urban' foods. Poisson regression analysis was applied to estimate the associated factors according to the 90 % CI. Three villages (Auaris, Maturacá and Ariabú) in the Yanomami indigenous territory, in the Brazilian Amazon. In total, 251 Yanomami children aged 6 to 59 months were evaluated. The prevalence of consumption of 'regional' and 'urban' in natura or minimally processed foods was 93 % and 56 %, respectively, and consumption of ultra-processed foods was 32 %. Ultra-processed food consumption was 11·6 times higher in children of Maturacá and 9·2 times higher in Ariabú when compared with the children of Auaris and 31 % lower in children who had mothers with shorter stature. Despite the high frequency of consumption of in natura and minimally processed foods, the consumption of ultra-processed foods was substantial and was associated with demographic and maternal factors in Yanomani indigenous children under 5 years of age.

The end of indigenous territory? Projected counterurbanization in rural Protected Indigenous Areas in Temuco, Chile

Indigenous land is permeable to uses and practices that differ greatly from what current regulations establish. At the international level it is possible to see how real estate, agribusiness and forestry projects are diminishing these communities' capacity to control and manage their territories. A similar situation can be seen in Chile, where Mapuche communities have experienced a loss of territory to these external productive agents. However, a new actor has appeared on the horizon of permeability of indigenous territory: the amenity migrant. In this sense, and less evidently in the international literature, the counterurbanization process based on amenity uses in legally protected indigenous lands opens up a new front in the conflicts over peri-urban lands. The objective of this paper is to explore and discover the future impacts that the processes of suburbanization through counterurbanization will have indigenous lands in the vicinity of the city of Temuco, regional capital of La Araucanía (Chile), which are already visible. Considering a series of variables theoretically related to the projection of natural amenity on rural land and applying a logistic regression model, the results indicate that the future of the Títulos de Merced, the main mechanism recognizing property over indigenous lands, will be affected by the expansion of leisure plots, the modality through which amenity practices in Chile are disseminated. With this evidence, the implications that this situation has for Territorial Planning Instruments are discussed.

The Applied Anthropology Degree Program at the Universidad Politécnica Salesiana: Features of the Applied Signature of Anthropological Wisdom from Its Historical Praxis

This article is framed within the field that studies anthropology through its institutions. Using the applied anthropology degree program at the Universidad Politécnica Salesiana in Ecuador as a case study, the article intends to show that the applied character of anthropology is a permanent, inherent, and necessary feature at every stage but especially in training. This work goes beyond the understanding of applied as a dispensable sub-discipline that embraces the function of solving problems that intertwine sociocultural diversity with development, education, health, and public policies, that is, the view that applied anthropology is one possibility among others but one which is possible to do without. The concrete experienced reviewed in this work shows distinctive elements, for example, the critical indigenism that conditioned the beginning of the applied anthropology program. As shown throughout this work, from the beginning, the program’s academic design valued anthropology as a set of conceptual and methodological resources capable of promoting intercultural processes, putting together activists’ networks, and shaping local wisdom, all the while upholding indigenous peoples’ and nationalities’ autonomies. The article prioritizes identifying traits that signify the applied dimension of anthropology based on the degree’s life and concrete academic praxis.1 Evidence emerges from archives, reflective essays on experience and, mainly, testimonials from alumni that fulfill an ideal criterion: activists and militants in indigenous territories or intercultural experiences. We conclude that what is applied is a necessary and inherent dimension of anthropological wisdom based on the assumption that “in-territory” training provides epistemic and pedagogical advantages relevant to the practice of anthropology.