Indigenous peoples, commons and the challenge of sustaining life amid capitalist land grabs

The issue about the role of the Indigenous peoples in the protection of the nature ‘commons’
has gained much traction among policy experts, civil society organizations and scholars,
particularly in the face of climate change. It has been suggested that indigenous’
“environmental stewardship” would significantly contribute to addressing the climate crisis
and that ‘land tenure security’ is key to this aim. This paper critically explores the potential
contributions from the indigenous peoples towards a better future for humanity by examining
less optimistic cases of indigenous commons and livelihoods. My study focuses on the
struggles of two indigenous communities in Colombia at the so-called “last agricultural
frontier”, the Altillanura (‘High Plains’) — also the epicenter of the recent land rush in the
country. Both communities exhibit a ‘commons’ that have been taken over, fully or partly,
by big capital, and that are experiencing a great difficulty to sustain life as a result of broader
processes of capitalist development taking place in the area. This latter aspect is often
overlooked by conventional accounts that tend to treat indigenous peoples as a stand-alone
category isolated from capitalist dynamics, at times resulting in a ‘merely indigenous’
perspective. Building on more comprehensive frameworks, I conclude that the notion of
‘recognition’ (e.g., of indigenous land rights) is inseparable from ‘restitution’,
‘redistribution’, ‘regeneration’ and ‘representation/resistance’ – that are altogether key
political reference points for a more hopeful indigenous’ commons, closer to what is
popularly assumed or aspired in scholarly, political and policy circles today.