Indigenous Rights and Decolonial Practices in Latin America

Over recent decades, Indigenous peoples across Latin America have intensified demands for the recognition and implementation of rights to land, culture, natural resources and self-governance. While international instruments have provided normative standards, the actualisation of these rights hinges on national and subnational policies that often collide with corporate and state interests in extractive industries. In response, many communities have drawn on decolonial thought to challenge the dominance of Western epistemologies, seeking to revitalise ancestral knowledge systems and worldviews. Constitutions in several countries now recognise plurinational statehood and communal ownership models, yet tensions persist in areas of mining, forestry and agribusiness. Decolonial practices extend beyond legal arenas into cultural and ecological spheres: participatory mapping and community-led biodiversity management reinforce territorial sovereignty, while language revitalisation, ritual renewal and artistic expression serve as vehicles for collective healing and political mobilisation. Contemporary Indigenous-led feminism has further broadened these claims by integrating gender equity into environmental justice struggles. Transnational networks of solidarity, digital archiving projects and grassroots mobilisations underscore the global relevance of Andean, Amazonian and Mesoamerican epistemologies in shaping debates on sustainable development, human rights and postcolonial futures.

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Indigenous Rights and Decolonial Practices in Latin America publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in indigenous rights and decolonial practices in latin america across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Decolonial practice: A suite of strategies and worldviews aimed at dismantling colonial power structures, privileging Indigenous epistemologies and restoring ancestral sovereignties.

Self-determination: The principle that Indigenous nations have the right to freely determine their political status, pursue economic, social and cultural development, and govern their internal affairs without external interference.

Intergenerational trauma: The transmission of historical, social and psychological wounds across generations within Indigenous communities as a result of colonial dispossession and cultural suppression.

Cultural reclamation: The active process by which Indigenous groups revive, maintain and adapt languages, rituals, arts and knowledge systems disrupted by colonial regimes.

Survivance: A concept denoting Indigenous presence and active resistance, encompassing both survival and creative continuance of cultural identity.

Body-territory: A decolonial notion that conceives land and human bodies as mutually constitutive, emphasising the inseparability of ecological and community well-being.

References

1. Like Water, We Re-Member: A Conceptual Model of Identity (Re)formation through Cultural Reclamation for Indigenous Peoples of Mexico in the United States. Genealogy (2023).
2. DO CORPO-TERRITÓRIO AO TERRITÓRIO-CORPO (DA TERRA): CONTRIBUIÇÕES DECOLONIAIS. GEOgraphia (2020).
3. Tracing Invisibility as a Colonial Project: Indigenous Women Who Seek Asylum at the U.S.-Mexico Border. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies (2021).