“I am Territory”: a reflection by a student of Wiwa elders and youth

Dr. Kristen Page

As I watched the sun set over the beautiful Santa Marta mountains before me, I tried to understand what Ismael meant when he said, “I am territory.[1]” Months later, I am still wrestling with this understanding.  A territory is defined as “the extent of the land belonging to or under the jurisdiction of a ruler, state, or group of people.[2]” To an ecologist, a territory is defined as a defended portion of a home range. I think of territories as space, or an area of land.  When I think about territories, I envision a power dynamic in which there is a resource that is “owned” or “controlled” by one, and “desired” by another.  In my understanding, territories have fences that exclude or require behaviors that gives one individual control over (the choices) of others. I believe that my understanding of territory, as influenced by my academic discipline and my faith tradition are limiting. So, I am left to wonder, how can someone claim to be territory and how can I change my understanding?

Maybe the place we start is with our understanding of imago Dei.  Perhaps when we consider ourselves as image-bearers, we envision ourselves as above creation, rather than part of creation. This understanding places us as “rulers” or “protectors” of territories rather than part of a territory. It allows us to build fences and defend spaces and resources for our own personal gain. When we create fences that block the connectivity of ecosystems, and especially when we place ourselves outside of the fence (system) we harm creation.   

Many indigenous ideologies place humans within the ecological community.  Jocabed R Solano Miselis of the Gunadule nation explains that the planet is our home and it “is a living being with a heart that beats with the life of millions of species, a lung that breathes through forests and oceans[3].”  She explains that indigenous peoples have been the guardians of most (80%) of the biodiversity on earth, and their understanding of “harmonious relationships of experience of respect, care and love [is] a model to follow [to] live in harmony with the earth.[4]”  This understanding of the human relationship with nature is fundamentally different than the European settler ideology.  Solano Miselis explains that to the Gundaule, “the earth is Mother Nana, because we emerge from her, we are nourished by her goodness and when we die we are planted in her…she is our nega (house)…[5]”  Interestingly enough, the name of my discipline, ecology, is from the root, oikos, meaning house.  The understanding of house seems different, though.  The Greek word, oikos, is referring to a physical house (property) or the household (implying the hierarchy of paternal inheritance and slavery)[6].  This understanding of house puts humans into a system of ownership and hierarchy rather than cooperation.  In this system, we forget that we are part of and a participant in the work of the house (nega), and we may ultimately consider the boundary and property-based understanding of territory.  This system is a relic of colonialism, and the power the Europeans exerted over peoples and lands as they expanded their reach.[7]  Willie Jennings explains that this “power over indigenous peoples and lands” resulted in “the destruction of place and space in the minds and hearts of Christians.[8]”  Jennings further explains that the indigenous understanding of connection to place was not understandable to “Europeans settlers [who] viewed people as separate from land” and prioritized ownership or property and boundaries… Europeans taught the peoples of the new world that they carry their identities completely on their body, detached from any specific land or animals or agriculture or place.[9]”

Many Christians seem to lose sight of the fact that humans were created to be part of and stewards of creation.  Somehow our understanding of imago Dei separates us from creation (Genesis 1:26-28)[10]. This image-bearing, for many, means that we are in a position of power, and this position gives us the right to exert dominion through our choices to “use” the land.  Aldo Leopold, in A Sand County Almanac, was the first to articulate a Land Ethic, and according to Piccolo, this was the first time the discipline of ecology was influenced by a “nonanthropocentric thought.[11]” In his essay, Leopold argues that the Mosaic Decalogue led to a society based on people-people relationships and distanced people from a relationship with the land.  Leopold argues “There is as yet no ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it…The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.[12]” To continue to pursue any form of land ethic (faith-based or otherwise) without recognizing that we are part of creation, may be in vain.

The consequences of this existence separate from land is the acquisition of and assimilation of land into parcels and a shift in valuation from intrinsic to commodified resources.  The European settler’s understanding of wilderness further separated them from the land. When the Europeans arrived in North America, there was no wilderness, only land. “Wilderness” is a construct of the European view of civilization.[13]  To a European Christian, the landscape of North America must have looked much like the “wilderness” found in the scriptures.  To the Indigenous peoples of North America, there would be no distinction between self and nature.  People are part of nature contributing to the cycles that are inherent to natural systems. Chief Standing Bear of the Ogalala Sioux explains:

We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills and the winding streams with their tangled growth as ‘wild.’ Only to the white man was nature a ‘wilderness’ and…the land ‘infested’ with ‘wild animals’ and ‘savage’ people. (Standing Bear 1933, p.38).

The tendency for White Europeans to see themselves as distinct from nature facilitated the transformation or destruction of the landscape.   Because the Indigenous peoples were considered part of the wilderness, they were transformed (assimilated) or destroyed along with the land.[14] Hundreds of years later, the feelings about wilderness are more nostalgic, thus there is movement towards protecting wilderness areas; however, the understanding that people are separate from land persists, so we protect by building fences.

This understanding of wilderness, legacy of displacement, private property and boundaries is now pervasive in land management and conservation strategies that began in the United States and Canada but have expanded worldwide.  The North American Model for Wildlife Conservation is the model for global conservation.  It is characterized by establishing boundaries to protected areas, restrictions on commercial exploitation of wildlife, and common laws to regulate species protection that often ignore the traditional uses of resources by Indigenous peoples.[15]  This management strategy eliminates markets for game (wildlife) and states that wildlife should only be killed for a “legitimate purpose,” which is typically defined as trophy hunting rather than subsistence hunting.[16]  The result of this type of management is “fortress conservation” and prevents indigenous participation as members of the ecosystem, both physically (because of physical borders) and because their traditional knowledge is not valued or considered in the process of making conservation decisions.  “Conservation is the idea that nature is separate from humanity, and that we can prevent the destruction of nature without addressing what’s wrong with the societies that destroy it.[17]”  In the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, Colombia, fortress conservation has resulted in the dispossession of the land belonging to the Wiwa. The land that they see themselves belonging to.  If the Wiwa consider themselves “territory,” what does this loss mean for their identity?

Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, Colombia is one of the most biodiverse ecoregions on the planet with more than 100 endemic species occurring throughout.[18]  The 60,000 indigenous people and 150,000 settlers live among a variety of ecosystems ranging from dry and wet tropical forests to higher altitude sub-Andean and Andean forests, paramo, and even zones with perpetual snow cover and glaciers.[19]  Some of these lands have been protected in reserves since 1959, and biocultural protection was implemented in 1980. The non-indigenous settlers of the region received protection of their rights in 1995, but it took until 2010 before the indigenous communities were recognized as having rights within the territory.[20]  These recognized rights do not necessarily restore rights to resources or land, unless the communities can pay for ownership. 

Conservation in Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta is a priority but follows the Eurocentric traditions of preservation within preserves – specifically the Sierra Nevada Natural Park and Tayrona Park. “Conservation that removes people from their communities of land invokes epistemological authority and displaced relationships.[21]” Often these strategies of conservation come from an ideology that we can return a place to a pristine state.  A state that is described by Jennifer Grenz as “Eden Ecology.”[22] This is “an ecology with notions of perfectionism of the environment. An ecology where perfection was broken by the introduction of humans as they fell from grace, and humans are blamed for the resulting imbalance of the once-perfect world. Where the ultimate goal is to restore, to put things back the way they were when they were perfect.”[23]  The problem is that “Eden ecology” removes people from the system.  Because of the conflation of our understanding of imago Dei placing us outside of creation, we try to implement management and conservation strategies without humans in the system. 

Indigenous communities, as caretakers of most of the biodiversity on the planet,[24] offer a different approach to conservation. Even though their research and management methodologies are not widely accepted by conventional academics, there is some movement to incorporate traditional ecological knowledge into conservation strategies.  The Indigenous ideology of humans within the system offers an alternative to scientific approaches and requires “Respect, Relationality, and Reciprocity.[25]” According to Grenz, the “Indigenous research methodology” places the researcher “in the research.[26]” A relational approach to conservation and management would value traditional knowledge and provide for a community-based management system with people acting as “Earth kin.[27]”

The Wiwa’s declaration: “I am territory,” offers us a way back to an understanding of our place in creation.  An understanding of what it means to “be territory” may be a return to an embodied spirituality, or an understanding that we are formed from dust; created, and an active part of creation.  Could an embodied spirituality help us understand our roles as stewards? Because we struggle to understand that we are part of creation, we also have a limited ability to understand our spirituality as connected to creation. C.S. Lewis described this intellectualized faith as “negative spirituality[28]” and suggests that by pursuing a more embodied spirituality (finding joy in the physical elements of creation) we can enhance our relationship with God, our creator.  Perhaps it is humbling to consider ourselves as created from dust or even to be created to be the caretaker of a garden; however, it does place us in a special relationship with both God, our creator and the rest of creation.

The lesson I learned in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta while listening to Wiwa elders and youth is to humbly consider my place in creation.  If I can reposition myself, I can advocate for new ways to approach my discipline and stewardship of creation.  Fortress conservation and a desire for Eden ecology is creating a “contemporary crisis, [that] has more to do with justice, with structural violence and racism, with land theft, and with colonialism than with what we, in the Global North, call ‘environment,’ ‘climate,’ and ‘nature.[29]’” I want to continue to learn from my Wiwa teachers, and begin to discover ways that I can “become territory.”

Dr. Kristen Page

Biological and Health Sciences

Reflection written as part of Stott Fellows 2024

[1] Ismael Sabayu

[2] Oxford English Dictionary online. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/territory_n1?tab=meaning_and_use#18689442 Accessed 6 February 2025

[3] Solano Miselis, Jocabed R. 2024. Guardians of the Earth: Indigenous Peoples at COP16.

[4] ibid

[5] ibid

[6] MacDowell DM. 1989. The oikos in Athenian law. The Classical Quarterly, 39:10-21.

[7] Jennings W J. 2015. Overcoming racial faith. Divinity. Spring Issue:5-9.

[8] ibid

[9] ibid

[10] Genesis 2:7-9: ⁷ Then the Lord God formed a man^[c] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

⁸ Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ⁹ The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[11] Piccolo JJ. 2020.  Celebrating Aldo Leopold’s land ethic at 70. Conservation Biology, 34:1586-1588.

[12] Leopold A. A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River. Galaxy Books, pp. 202-203. Kindle Edition.

[13] Nash, R.  1967.  Wilderness and the American mind.  Yale University Press, New Haven.

[14] Adams DW. 1995. Education for extinction: American Indians and the boarding school experience, 1875-1928. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS.

[15] Morales N, Lee J, Newberry M, Bailey K. 2021. Redefining American conservation for equitable and inclusive social-environmental management. Ecological Applications, 33:e2749.

[16] ibid

[17] Longo F. 2023. Decolonizing conservation Pages 7-9 in Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-determination, Land, and a World in Common. Edited by Dawson A, Longo F, and Survival International. p.8

[18] Duran-Izquierdo M, Olivero-Verbel J. 2021. Vulnerability assessment of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Columbia: world’s most irreplaceable nature reserve. Global Ecology and Conservation, 28:e01592.

[19] ibid

[20] ibid

[21] Weber EJW, Barron ES. 2023. Coloniality and indigenous ways of knowing at the edges: emplacing Earth kin in conservation communities.  New Zealand Geographer. 79:132-137. p.132

[22] Grenz J. 2024. Medicine wheel for the planet. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN.

[23] ibid p.20-21

[24] Solano Miselis, Jocabed R. 2024. Guardians of the Earth: Indigenous Peoples at COP16.

[25] Grenz J. 2024. Medicine wheel for the planet. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN.

[26] ibid

[27] Weber EJW, Barron ES. 2023. Coloniality and indigenous ways of knowing at the edges: emplacing Earth kin in conservation communities.  New Zealand Geographer. 79:132-137.

[28] C.S. Lewis. Miracles: a preliminary study. P 194 London: Geoffrey Bles, 1947.

[29] Longo F. 2023. Decolonizing conservation Pages 7-9 in Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-determination, Land, and a World in Common. Edited by Dawson A, Longo F, and Survival International. p7