ABSTRACT
The Americas have developed, over centuries of transformation of its landscapes and peoples, diverse historical and intellectual paths regarding the problem of the commons and their use. The histories of occupation, transformation and vindication in the territories that could fall in the category of commons are unsurprisingly attached to the intellectual traditions that influenced the legal and policy actions over five hundred years since the encounter between Europe and the Americas. The economic approach to the commons emerged from the application of mathematical modeling used to search for solutions of dynamic optimization when extracting a renewable resource. The approaches to the problem of the commons mentioned so far essentially base their analysis on an individual that interacts with others regarding the use of shared resources. Despite the diversity in the histories of commons in different areas of the Americas, some elements shared by many of indigenous groups help to demonstrate the perspective of indigenous rural communities in the Americas.
