This text analyzes indigenous peoples' processes of identity construction as ecological natives. It opens space for reconstructing all the different networks, conditions of emergence, and implications (political, cultural, social and economic) of one specific event: the consolidation of the relationship between indigenous peoples and environmentalism. This text is based on ethnographic information and focused on the historical process of the emergence of indigenous peoples' movements in Latin America, in general, and indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta do Columbia (SNSM), in particular. It demonstrates the process of the construction of indigenous peoples' environmental identities as an interplay of local, national and transnational dynamics among indigenous peoples and environmental movements and discourses in relation to global environmental policies.
About the Author: Astrid Ulloa is an Associate Professor of Geography at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She has carried out extensive fieldwork in Colombia, mainly in Chocó and in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Her research focuses on indigenous peoples' movements, ethnicity, and the anthropology of the environment and climate change. She is the author of various books about community-based management of fauna and the cultural and environmental politics of indigenous peoples in Latin America and Colombia.
