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Paper short abstract

Drawing on photo-ethnography in Alpine valleys, this paper examines how environmental policies and ecological change shape relations between local populations, non-human entities, and territory. It questions the relevance of indigeneity in non-colonial mountain contexts.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on photo-ethnography conducted in Alpine valleys, this paper examines how environmental policies on wildlife and climate change shape relations between local populations, non-human entities, and territory in a non-colonial mountain context. It focuses on the ontological frictions and limits emerging from policymaking in fast-changing Alpine landscapes, and on how these frictions reconfigure everyday forms of territorial belonging without taking the form of explicit claims to indigeneity.

Rather than analysing overt narratives of autochthony or ownership, the paper attends to how environmental governance produces implicit boundaries of belonging and authority through ordinary practices and situated relations to the mountain environment. The Alpine case thus offers a critical entry point to reflect on the analytical limits and political effects of extending indigeneity to mountain regions shaped primarily by environmental regulation rather than colonial dispossession.