Between Gold and Territory: Resistance, Ancestral Knowledge and Collective Action in the Face of Mining in the Amazon
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The glitter of gold can it really justify the destruction of vital ecosystems and the suffering of the communities that depend on them for survival? This study investigates how Indigenous women of the Amazon, particularly in the riverside communities along the Napo River, resist gold mining by defending their territories and applying ancestral knowledge to mitigate the socio-environmental impacts exacerbated by the climate crisis. In recent decades, gold mining has expanded significantly in the region, driven by neoliberal policies of the Ecuadorian government, which has promoted extractivism as a strategy to diversify the national economy. This shift has resulted in the invasion of Indigenous lands and a rise in environmental, social, and cultural conflicts across the area. Although there is literature addressing the impacts of extractivism, there remains a notable gap in anthropological research exploring how Indigenous communities and local collectives in the Napo region collaborate to defend their territories and uphold the rights of nature particularly regarding their joint role in exposing mining-related harms, fostering community mobilisation, and producing shared knowledge. This dissertation aims to help fill this gap by showing how the articulation between Indigenous communities and local collectives strengthens their capacity for response, creating more deeply rooted forms of resistance and reexistence in their territories. The research draws on a hybrid ethnographic methodology that combines document analysis and online materials with anthropological fieldwork and digital ethnography, including interviews and interactions with Indigenous leaders and other local actors. The main objective is to contribute to the development of a critical anthropological perspective on the effects of mining in the Amazon, focusing on the practices of resistance and reexistence of Indigenous communities, highlighting their ancestral knowledge, and reflecting on possible pathways for preserving their territories and the Amazonian biodiversity.
Author: Saa, Lilian Mishel Almeida
Language: Portuguese
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7112637635