Introduction

This chapter foregrounds the intimate connections between extractivisms and existences. It highlights some of the ontological foundations used when considering existences and highlights how modern Western lenses can be inadequate. This chapter illustrates how different kinds of practices and ways of acting can indicate broader patterns of being together with what exists in a particular place, both seen and unseen. The ontological conflicts of extractivisms are exposed using an extended example from fieldwork in Peru's Madre de Dios. This is illustrative of the pressure that Indigenous and other traditional forest- and river-dwelling populations face when extractivisms expand into their spaces. Iterations of these kinds of conflicts and framings are seen again and again at the frontiers of extractivism. The understandings of the world held by Indigenous and non-Western lived environments, knowledge, and practices are a challenge for the extractivist understandings of the world and the value of existences.