ABSTRACT
The indigenous peoples of Colombia have become important and powerful interlocutors within national and international political arenas that allow them to rethink those political spheres and their predominant conceptions of nation, citizenship, democracy, development, and especially environment. Although indigenous peoples have been stereotyped during the last five hundreds years as savages, evil miscreants, or grown-up children, in the last few decades indigenous movements’ political struggles have succeeded in transforming such representations. Many in Colombia and the international community now view indigenous peoples as ecological natives who protect the global environment and give us all hope in the face of the environmental crises brought about by western-style development. Consequently, representations of indigenous peoples in the developed world have changed from the “savage colonial subject” to the “political-ecological agent.”
