Contribution short abstract

I argue that the Indigenous right to land and conservation projects are encoded in a parallel process of racialization and propertization. From ethnographic research in Paraguay and Chile, I propose a series of equivocations regarding Indigenous relationships to land, livelihoods and conservation.

Contribution long abstract

In this paper, I argue that both the right to land for Indigenous people and conservation projects are encoded in a simultaneous process of racialization and propertization in Latin America. This is based on shared common values and universalized beliefs of how land is to be held, managed and distributed, a process begun through internal settler colonialism and encoded in a liberal approach to land law. I propose there are a series of equivocations (following Viveiros de Castro 2004) regarding Indigenous relationships to land, livelihoods and conservation. The first equivocation is land as property; the second is man or the state as title-holder, and the third is conservation with Indigenous erasure (pristine wilderness/absolute rewilding). I draw on my ethnographic research on Guarani collectively titled property in Paraguay and Lafkenche Indigenous coastal management areas in Chile to show how Indigenous people navigate the interstices of these equivocations to (re)produce their land and sea livelihoods, questioning both property and conservation through their own relational, autonomous approaches, where liberal understandings of land use management and rights might dictate otherwise.