Perspectives of Environmental Justice from Indigenous Peoples of Latin America: A Relational Indigenous Environmental Justice

The rights of the Wayúu people and water in the context of mining in La Guajira, Colombia: demands of relational water justice

“…I consider that the Wayúu people’s demands claim for another perspective of environmental and water justice, as relational indigenous environmental justice (Ulloa, 2017). But we can modify this concept and, for the Wayúu’s context, see it as a relational water justice , in which water’s territories are seen as living entities, in order to be recognized as a political actor with rights to be and to exist.…”

“…I will also apply posthuman perspectives that explain the complex interactions between humans and nonhumans and the ways in which they establish relationships and coproduce each other under relational ontologies (De la Cadena, 2015; Elmhirst, 2015; Escobar, 2015). Such an approach explicates the demand for relational water justice and water’s territorial rights (Ulloa, 2017).…”

“…Recently, thanks to extractivist processes on indigenous territories, the dialogue has included nonhuman perspectives leading to new notions of environmental justice. According to Ulloa (2017: 179) “Under these perspectives, environmental justice should be understood as an ethical, political, territorial, and reciprocal action with the nonhumans from indigenous territorial and cultural principles.” Building on indigenous peoples’ identity and political dynamics leads to a notion of relational indigenous environmental justice (Ulloa, 2017).…”

More-Than-Human Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America

“…in order to respect the indigenous principles of reciprocity and responsibility necessary for the "circulation of life". A relational indigenous environmental justice therefore is directly related to territorialities, situated knowledge, complementarity, connectivity and the defence of life, in the broadest sense of the term (Ulloa 2017). of its older and newer versions tend to maintain the primacy of the social over the natural, these perspectives contribute to politicize and historicize our understandings of human-nonhuman relations and therefore should also be taken into account when thinking of conviviality-inequality with the more-than-human in Latin America.…”

“…Examining human-nonhuman relations also requires problematizing universal ontological claims and accounting for the multiple meanings, conceptions and forms of relating and being with the "nonhuman" depending on different perspectives and subject positions (Cadena 2015;Ulloa 2017). It implies acknowledging the historical contributions of indigenous and other non-western knowledge systems that have been systematically silenced, devalued and excluded (Panelli 2010;Sundberg 2014;Todd 2016).…”