Indigenous Peoples represent approximately 10% of Latin America's population, and their territories encompass a fifth of the region, maintaining high levels of biodiversity despite historical colonial dispossession. Their relationship with these territories is based on their own epistemologies, which are holistic and spiritual in nature, upholding values ​​of respect, reciprocity, and environmental protection, and from which they position themselves as political actors at various levels. These epistemologies challenge the categories with which the social sciences and state institutions address territory, questioning notions such as "natural resources" and replacing them with concepts like "territories of life."

For Indigenous Peoples, extractivism is not limited to the exploitation of nature, but also includes epistemic extractivism, exercised through academic practices that dispossess them of knowledge. The text highlights the importance of collaborative methodologies, the co-production of knowledge, and epistemic sovereignty, expressed especially in intercultural education experiences and in Indigenous and intercultural universities that promote their own knowledge systems.

Another central theme is territorial autonomy and Indigenous governance, both in constitutionally recognized structures (comarcas, resguardos, TIOCs) and in autonomous experiences not formally recognized (Cherán, Zapatista communities). These autonomies develop forms of self-government, territorial protection, and food sovereignty, facing tensions with extractive projects. Although there are normative advances such as ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, conflicts persist due to the formalistic, fragmented, and limited application of the right to consultation and prior consent. However, alongside these legal challenges, another equally critical issue emerges: Indigenous food sovereignty is based on traditional agroecological systems—such as the milpa, the nainu, or the chacras—characterized by resilience, diversity, and sustainability, but threatened by food globalization and the influx of industrialized products, which deteriorates health and food culture. These problems are exacerbated by structural inequalities that particularly impact Indigenous and peasant populations.

However, beyond these legal frameworks, it is also necessary to consider Indigenous education, which underscores the region's educational systems' reproduction of a colonial matrix and hegemonic knowledge. A critical interculturality is proposed that recognizes epistemic diversity, conflicts, and the urban Indigenous diaspora, whose experiences are often rendered invisible. Current models do not adequately consider the territorial, linguistic, and political differences of Indigenous peoples, nor the cultural strategies developed in urban contexts.

The Working Group focuses its work on the relationship between Indigenous peoples and their territories, adopting an intercultural approach to plural knowledge systems through inter-epistemic dialogues and methodological decolonization. It seeks to document food systems, analyze experiences of autonomy, and monitor regulations on Indigenous participation, articulating Indigenous knowledge with contemporary critical theories such as relational ontologies, perspectivism, ontologies of nature, and the commons framework.

The application of the regulations

This thematic axis addresses the application of local, national and international regulations related to the rights of Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples, considering both the current legal frameworks and the practical mechanisms that determine their implementation in the territories of life.

It starts from the recognition of self-determination as a guiding principle and the obligation to guarantee Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in any process that involves decision-making, territorial impact, extractive projects, development initiatives, research or external intervention.

Furthermore, the importance of respecting community protocols, self-governing systems, and Indigenous and Afro-descendant knowledge as legitimate sources of authority and regulation is emphasized. This approach includes the analysis and promotion of instruments such as ILO Convention 169, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, national autonomy laws, and the protocols created by communities to regulate entry into, relationships with, and interaction within their territories.

In accordance with this, it is assumed as a central premise that all research or intervention must problematize historical power relations, forms of representation, and extractive logics of knowledge (Caniuqueo, Tricot, and Espinoza, 2019). Therefore, all action in Indigenous territories must be guided by principles of epistemic justice, horizontal dialogue, and full compliance with the regulations that safeguard the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Food sovereignty

Models such as the milpa, the nainu in Mesoamerica, and the chacras/chagras in southern territories constitute agroecological systems that have demonstrated resilience, diversity, and sustainability for centuries. Although they are not yet fully recognized by mainstream policies, these systems contribute significantly to poverty and hunger reduction, have low greenhouse gas emissions, do not depend on agrochemicals, and rely on native seeds, avoiding the use of genetically modified varieties.

Our Working Group seeks to delve deeper into how these practices engage with the current challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and extractive pressures on vital territories. The analysis will be conducted from the perspective of our own dialogical knowledge systems, articulating community experience and local wisdom with collaborative and decolonized methodologies. We are interested in understanding current conditions of land access, the impacts of the agro-industrial model, and community strategies for confronting global warming.

We also incorporate the Recommendations of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), which underline that structural inequalities—gender, economic, territorial, ethnic, generational and access to opportunities—affect food security, perpetuate poverty and deepen violence, especially against women and historically marginalized groups such as small producers, landless peasants, agricultural workers, migrants, refugees and Indigenous Peoples.

Inequality, food insecurity, and malnutrition hinder the right to health, education, and a dignified life. These are compounded by phenomena such as natural disasters, pandemics, armed conflicts, and economic crises, which increase the vulnerability of indigenous and rural communities. Food globalization has also altered consumption patterns through the influx of processed products, impacting health, food culture, and the continuity of traditional culinary knowledge (PAHO, 2020).

Intercultural Education

The proposal argues that intercultural education cannot be limited to the occasional incorporation of cultural or linguistic content into the official curriculum. On the contrary, it demands structural and epistemological transformations that challenge the very foundations of the modern Western educational system. In this sense, it proposes a model built collaboratively with Indigenous peoples, taking into account their territorial, linguistic, and political contexts, as well as their historical experiences.

To understand the dynamics that operate on the territories of indigenous peoples, in our Working Group perspectives from indigenous knowledge systems coexist and dialogue with critical theoretical currents from Western sciences that, in a general sense, are part of the so-called ontological turn that includes conceptual perspectives from the relational ontologies of Arturo Escobar, the perspectivism of Viveros, the ontologies of Philippe Descola, the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour; as well as the conceptual framework of the commons of Latin American political ecology.

One of the expressions of Indigenous peoples as political actors in their territories that is of interest to our Working Group corresponds to the experiences of territorial autonomy and Indigenous self-government, both those recognized in constitutions and those that are implemented "without asking permission." In their diverse forms of autonomy, Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples are advancing in the exercise of their right to self-determination over their territories and communities.

From these experiences, they develop tools for governing the territory and the communities that inhabit it, advance legislation that undermines the monocultural colonial state, and incorporate their sources of law (traditional laws, their own legal systems) into international law. And a third of these communities lack recognition of their collective rights (FAO and FILAC, 2021).

Extractive and development projects have been a source of socio-environmental conflict in recent decades, threatening or killing land defenders and expropriating Indigenous communities' lands, even within their autonomous territories. New strategies within these mechanisms include the consolidation of carbon markets to address climate change, using alternative narratives of "green" or "sustainable" practices and "energy transition" in the mining, energy, hydrocarbon, forestry, and coastal sectors. In the mining sector, this has led to the emergence of new mining territories: the Lithium Triangle, which affects Indigenous communities in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, and the mining of critical and rare minerals. Paradoxically, these projects have not resulted in the closure of coal mines, such as the one located in Wayuu territory in Colombia. This narrative also promotes a "new" form of mining, one that supposedly respects the rights of Indigenous peoples through its corporate social responsibility policies. In the energy sector, new projects are being promoted, this time for non-conventional renewable energy (NCRE) sources such as wind, run-of-river hydroelectric, and photovoltaic projects. In the hydrocarbons sector, far from reducing oil and gas projects, fracking is now also being incorporated (such as the Vaca Muerta project in Argentina). In the forestry sector, projects are being introduced under the REDD+ program.

These recent dynamics also intersect at an international scale under a complex articulation between the general international system of environmental governance and climate governance in particular (articulated under Sustainable Development Goals, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the REDD+ program, the Partnership for Action on a Green Economy), international intergovernmental organizations (such as the OECD, IPBES) and regional ones (such as UNASUR and its IIRSA program, the Network of Electrical Interconnection Systems of Central American Countries - SIEPAC), multi-stakeholder international bodies (such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative - EITI, the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, the International Union for Conservation of Nature), international financing institutions (such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank) and even international (such as ICMM, IPIECA) and national (such as CCCMC) extractive industry organizations. This diversity of international actors comes together to promote initiatives and projects that have a high impact and even violations of human rights on Indigenous Peoples, based on narratives of "energy transition", "green economy", "sustainable mining", "decarbonization", "adaptation to climate change", and even "respect for the right to prior, free and informed consent" of Indigenous Peoples.

The rationale and analysis of the theoretical, social, and intellectual relevance of the topic is articulated in three interconnected dimensions: the urgency of the civilizational crisis in relation to the territory, the dispute for the hegemony of knowledge, and the political role of indigenous autonomies in the face of the State and global extractivism.

The social and intellectual relevance of this issue is rooted in the urgency of the global civilizational crisis, marked by environmental degradation, overexploitation, and biodiversity loss, of which extractivism is a central driver. Indigenous peoples, who represent approximately 10% of the population and whose territories cover nearly a fifth of the region's total area, are positioned as fundamental political actors. Despite the history of colonial dispossession, Indigenous territories still harbor the greatest biodiversity on the planet. Their significance lies in the fact that their conception of territory as territories of life, based on knowledge systems with a holistic perspective of respect and reciprocity, and not as "natural resources," transforms the defense of territory into the defense of life itself in the face of the advancing socio-environmental conflicts generated by extractive pressures.

The intellectual and theoretical relevance lies in the epistemic challenge posed by the coloniality of knowledge, which elevates the Eurocentric perspective as authentic knowledge and relegates Indigenous intellectual legacies to ignorance or superstition. The Working Group (WG) confronts epistemic or academic extractivism, assuming that the dispossession of nature/territory is part of the same process as the dispossession of their epistemes (epistemicide). Theoretically, the WG is committed to epistemic justice and the decolonization of methodologies, promoting dialogues between plural knowledge systems, Western critical currents (such as the ontological turn, relational ontologies, and Latin American political ecology), and Indigenous epistemologies. This implies recognizing the status of Indigenous knowledge systems as sciences (in the sense of true knowledge for Indigenous peoples).

Finally, on the political level, the issue of territorial autonomies and governance, including those constitutionally recognized (such as the comarcas in Panama or resguardos in Colombia).

These experiences are crucial because they develop tools for territorial governance and advance legislation that undermines the monocultural state and introduces their sources of law (traditional laws, their own legal systems) into the international arena. This analysis is fundamental in the context of recent dynamics, where hegemonic narratives such as the “energy transition” (lithium mining, rare earth elements) and “sustainable mining” drive new forms of extractivism and human rights violations against Indigenous peoples. The Working Group, by adopting a situated perspective, seeks to develop governance analyses that incorporate colonial perspectives and take Indigenous peoples as their epistemological starting point. This will require, on the one hand, strengthening Indigenous knowledge systems and, on the other, challenging the almost immutable structures of the Western knowledge system and creating a dialogue