The Gatekeepers of the Mountain: Environmental Conservation Discourses and Indigenous Everyday Practices in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia

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Are environmental politics aimed at preserving land for traditional indigenous use, bound to be harmful for indigenouspopulations? To what extent can collaboration as a political project arise as a solution? I propose to conduct researchwith the indigenous Wiwa in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (SNSM), which is the scene for dramatic and ambivalentencounters between environmentalist agendas and indigenous politics. I will explore the extent to which environmentalpolitics influence indigenous discourses of identity, and how those, in turn, shape conservationist discourses. I will focusspecifically on how fragmented representations of indigeneity affect the Wiwa's political stance in environmentalmanagement. To study conflict and collaboration between indigenous and environmental actors, I will simultaneouslyconduct fieldwork in Wiwa villages, and with environmental experts working for NGOs as they collect biodiversity data, tounderstand how environmental discourse is actively created on the ground. My main objective is to shed light on existingconflicts and opportunities for collaboration between indigenous peoples and environmental actors. I also hope tocontribute to the anthropological literature of the SNSM by moving away from homogenous representations of the FourPeoples, of which the Wiwa are part. Such research has implications for the future conservation of the SNSM and forforms of sustainable development relying on indigenous representation for legitimacy