Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the ways of production and translation of knowledge about the specific territorialities of the Bunong and about their loss due to rubber plantations.

Paper long abstract:

Since ten years, the Bunong, an indigenous people from Cambodia, lost vast parts of their customary land to rubber plantations. The Bunong experience what I call in-situ displacement: They are not physically relocated, but remain in place while being powerless to prevent the change and loss of all that is familiar. Drawing from my anthropological research on indigenous territorialities and the impacts of displacement on the Bunong, the paper focuses on the cultural and social dimensions of communities' meaningful places and the tremendous impact of their loss. I elaborate on the challenges to unpack a central feature of displacement - the loss of land, understood not only as an economic resource but as a landscape of identifiable and meaningful places. Considerations on how to explore and translate land's meanings and values and peoples' loss of sense of place and belonging matter. How do we grasp and articulate the impact of the sudden erasure of familiar sensory and physical markers on displaced communities? How do we explore and communicate the cultural and social dimensions of the loss and rearticulation of communities' meaningful places, resources, and practices? What roles play place-based experiences, narratives, mapping excercises and land titling processes in the production of indigenous territorialities? Such a reflection allows for reasoning on the many dimensions of land-based relations that go far beyond mere economic considerations. It enhances our understanding of the effects of displacement on indigenous people 'in the way' and explores ways of remedy starting from affected peoples' understandings of impacts.

Paper short abstract:

State's concept of ancestral domain forces Indigenous peoples to change how they occupy their lands. New territorialities shape their practices and relationships with the State and among the group. Overall, their experience of space remains different than that represented by maps.

Paper long abstract:

In the Philippines, Indigenous peoples obtained ancestral lands with the advent of governments that were more open to defence of Indigenous rights. The Blaan of Mindanao, the Ibaloi of Benguet, and the Alangan of Mindoro all obtained an ancestral domain in 2009. The Blaan are nomads who settled in the mountains of Malbulen, after they had fled the lowlands where they had committed crimes. They never stay in the same places as they consider themselves to be occupants of the land which is owned by fun spirits. The Ibaloi inhabit the mountains of Baguio. They fought against the Spaniards and negotiated with the Americans to keep their gold mines. The Alangan dwell on the hills. They protected their territory from the lowlanders by building a wall of houses. Among the three groups a few leaders handled the negotiations with the authorities to map their borders. While they found diverse solutions to dwell in peace, the many (and unresolved) conflicts that resulted as consequences of the ancestral boundaries have led them to new ways of dwelling. How does one (and who) draw such borders, and from which perspective? That of the researcher, anthropologist or geographer? That of the official? That of the local leader? That of the hunter or farmer? Through fieldwork and participatory maps, this paper aims to compare three case studies in which ancestral domain have affected Indigenous peoples and transformed their senses of place. New territorialities shape their practices, views, relationships with the State and among the group.

Paper short abstract:

Anthropologists and geographers are working with indigenous people to produce compelling evidence of their relationship with the land, but these collaborative representations require further ethnographic input to truly unveil the richness of those relationships within their socio-cultural contexts.

Paper long abstract:

Indigenous groups are being compelled by states to legitimize their land claims as a means to avoid dispossession in the name of development. Officers expect to work with property deeds, in-situ boundaries, official maps or signs of agricultural use, which they consider reasonable evidence. Yet, indigenous peoples' relationship with space can rarely be explained or validated through those means. Anthropologists and geographers are working with them to produce alternative ways of authenticating people-land relationships, which might involve elaborating social cartographies, documenting on-site ceremonial gatherings, or interviewing local residents. In Colombia, a 3D representation of the Muisca sacred landscape and a Wiwa representation of sites within spatial networks using a string map are examples of successful social cartographies which illustrate places as spiritually interconnected. However, these cartographies have proven inadequate to portray peoples' multi-generational attachment to land in a compelling enough manner so as to concede them land rights, even more when violence has led to displacement.

It is crucial for scholars working with stakeholders to make use of decolonial theoretical and methodological approaches to move beyond these useful, yet over-simplified, representations of the indigenous relationship with the land in order to find ways to expose its experiential, non-consumerist basis. In this paper, I propose that by looking at contemporary processes of memory-making based on affective responses to everyday dwelling, we can begin to push towards a shift in policy within which sincerity overcomes authenticity as a means to validate indigenous rights over the lands they inhabit.

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at an old map drawn on birch bark by Ojijaak, an Anishinaabe elder, in 1932. It has since become a key piece of evidence for contemporary Anishinaabe people in a modern land rights claim. The map supports Anishinaabe land claims and challenges modernist assumptions about nature.

Paper long abstract:

In 1932, on one of seven extensive visits up the Berens River, American anthropologist A. Irving Hallowell met a man named Ojijaak (Crane) who became one of his most important acquaintances on the river. It was Ojijaak who provided Hallowell with much of the information which he later published in his monograph on the Midewiwin. Hallowell said in 1936 that although Ojijaak apparently never led the Midewiwin himself, "he is the only man on the river who, at present, would be capable of doing so" (2010:397). They seem to have developed an excellent relationship and one of the products of that relationship is a map, a birch bark scroll, and an accompanying text explaining the drawing. This 80 year old artefact of Hallowell's thoughtful and collaborative anthropological practice has since become a key piece of evidence for contemporary Anishinaabe people in the area. The map underlines their awareness of their place in the world and illustrates a sophisticated Anishinaabe understanding of land ownership and use value claims. They used it, in 2018, to argue successfully for UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape designation for their traditional territories - Pimachiowin Aki. This paper looks at the ways in which early Anishinaabe mapping practices and Anishinaabe ideas about primary relationships with the natural world challenge Modernist dichotomies of culture and nature. Ojijaak's map provides insight into old Anishinaabe ideas about the known world and uniquely Anishinaabe evidence in support of a modern Indigenous guardianship claim to a fragile boreal cultural landscape.

Paper short abstract:

The legalization of the Eñepa lands in Venezuela allowed to elucidate their geographical ontology. The use of ethno-geographical tools in benefit of a westphalian formulation was followed by experimental proposes for a relational and allocentred approach of their territories.

Paper long abstract:

Between 2010 and 2015 I did a fieldwork among the Eñepa (Panare) of Venezuelan Guyana.

A first phase of this work was dedicated to the legalization of their lands.

Among the requirements of this process, there are two evidentiary elements: "ancestrality", which must be justified by the study of written archives and oral tradition; and "traditionality", which arises from cultural vitality.

Both arguments are synthesized in the knowledge of the territory by the toponymy and the monumentalization of certain sites, and respond to a westphalian thought: the territory is the appropriated habitat by a group which makes it their possession.

I followed these requirements and made a participatory map of the loan of 50 Eñepa communities. However, I quickly understood that there was no conscience of a territorial whole and therefore no ancestrality.

The use of the land is done by negotiation and sharing and not by appropriation, the point of view of the others - very often non-human - is essential to account for spatialization.

In addition to the legal procedure, I adapted the geographical tool to the most appropriate levels of spatial cognition: the endogamical nexus (circuits of individual lived space; marital exchanges; assistance in rituals; fractional solidarity) the inter-regional level (exchange of goods; hostility; sorcery) and the onirical level (shamanic trips; mythical places).

The articulation of its three levels reveals the geographical ontology of the Eñepa people, essential to aboard the territorial dispute.

Paper short abstract:

Moving from a collaborative research with young indigenous artists and intellectuals, the paper addresses the Mapuche diaspora and its engagement with urban space in Santiago, Chile, challenging traditional constructions of indigenous territoriality and exploring distinct forms of place-making.

Paper long abstract:

Within the frame of a collaborative and practiced-based research with young indigenous artists and intellectuals (the MapsUrbe project, 2017-2020), the paper addresses the Mapuche diaspora and its engagement with urban space in Santiago de Chile. Drawing on artistic interventions in the waria (city), including performance, mapping, and video making, indigenous experiences of territory are explored as encompassing both the city and the land of origin in the rural south, in an on-going negotiation and creative repositioning through and beyond displacement from the ancestral territory.

At the intersection of the city's materialities and the memories, imaginations and trajectories of the project's participants, indigenous spatial experience is understood as dynamic and characterised by movement through places. Focusing on multiple acts of traversing (Guattari 1995) - both within the city and in relation to migration - the proposed paper rethinks the Mapuche concept of tuwün (place of origin), usually linked to rural territories, within the space of the city. Moving from dissenting imaginations (Escobar 2004) and a decolonial perspective based on a process of knowledge co-production collaboratively shared with the research participants, traditional and essentialist constructions of indigenous territoriality are challenged. Through the dialectical and creative relationship between the body and the city, distinct and more complex forms of place-making are explored, allowing for a re-definition of political and poetic horizons of indigenous spatiality.