ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an ethnographic analysis of the meetings held between an oil company and a Sikuani Indigenous community from the Colombian lowlands, during a process of prior consultation over oil exploration within the confines of their territory. Having established a broad description of norms and practices regarding consultation and FPIC in Colombia – including the key role of the Constitutional Court – I develop a case study based on ethnographic methods. My aim is to illustrate the power scenes and relations that took place in these meetings, and to examine some of the effects of the participation of oil companies on the internal political relations of the Sikuani government. I argue that prior consultation is a normalised, formalised, and choreographed practice but also a space for political and ontological debate. In this sense, consultation works as a means for everyday governance and ends up by establishing boundaries between the adequate and inadequate means of social mobilisation. Therefore, in order for prior consultation to be a real dialogue between the Indigenous Peoples, the State and the companies, Indigenous ontologies must be included in the process.
