Indigenous territories in Colombia: from transnational appropriations to alternative territorialities

Abstract

Territoriality and representations have been widely referenced for its potential as a tool of political and collective rights claims of indigenous peoples to their territories and resources. However, the new economic and political processes require rethinking the potential and limitations of conventional approaches to the analysis of indigenous territories, and raising other ways of understanding territorial autonomy and alternatives of territories’ representation and control. Thus, I argue that indigenous territorial dynamics must be analyzed under the concept of indigenous relational autonomy, which generates responses that can be considered alternative spatialities or alternative territorial regimes, which at the same time generate new ways of spatial representation, that confront the logic of transnational and national political and economic appropriation and allow alternatives of territorial representations and control, as spaces of resistance to position indigenous territories in local, national and global contexts.