There is a fundamental difference between territory and border. A difference that many indigenous peoples have always understood, but which the modern world has often overlooked.
Borders are lines. Territories are relationships.
Colonialism transformed land into possession.Into property. Into division. Into a map. Into a dispute. It created flags, passports, fences, walls, and rigid identities associated with nation-states. It taught us to believe that belonging is something defined by artificial lines drawn on a piece of paper.
But many indigenous cosmologies have never understood territory in this way.
Territory is not just physical land. It is not merely geography. It is not the country where someone was born, the current government, or the flag they inherited. Territory is living memory. It is ancestry. It is connection. It is collective responsibility. It is the way a people connects with rivers, seeds, stories, languages, dreams, spirits, bodies, and one another.
The body as a living territory
That is why, for many indigenous peoples, the body is also territory.
And perhaps that is one of the most profoundly decolonial ideas we can relearn today.
Being a territorial body does not mean denying one’s origins or rejecting cultural identities. It means understanding that identity goes far beyond modern nationalism.It goes beyond documents, borders, and temporary governments.
It is recognizing that we carry stories in our blood, in our gestures, in the pain we have inherited, in our affections, and in the ways we care for one another, cook, love, resist, and exist.
The land lives within us. As Ailton Krenak reminds us, there is no real separation between body and land; we are an extension of the living earth, not its owners.
And we live in relationship with others.
From “Hell is other people” to “Home is other people”
For a long time, modern Western thought upheld the idea of separation as destiny.In Huis Clos (1944),Jean-Paul Sartrecaptures this tension in the phrase “hell is other people,” often interpreted as an expression of the conflict of existence under the gaze of the other. Hell is other people. Coexistence as conflict, limitation, imprisonment.
In contrast, the Turkish journalist and writer Ece Temelkuran, author of books such as How to Lose a Country and Together: A Manifesto Against the Heartless World, proposes almost a civilizational reversal of this logic: “home is other people”. Home is other people.
Perhaps this is one of the revolutions of our time.
If hell is separation, home is connection.
This resonates deeply with many indigenous and non-Western cosmologies, where existence has never been an individual act. The “self” does not exist without the collective. It does not exist apart from the community, the land, the ancestors, the elders, the children, the rivers, or future generations.
Decolonization means unlearning divisions
In many Buddhist, Taoist, and ancestral traditions, life is interdependence. Nothing exists in isolation. Everything arises in relation to everything else.
The very idea of the individual as a separate entity is a recent construct within certain Western systems.
Everything is about relationships. Everything is interdependent. Everything is a living space.
For this reason, it is also important to observe how different historical and political contexts reveal tensions surrounding belonging and territory: Catalonia and Spain, Scotland and the United Kingdom, the north and south of countries such as Italy or Brazil, or regions such as Kashmir and India. In all these contexts, we see how territory is also shaped by memory, trauma, recognition, and the desire for collective dignity.
But these tensions are not about a single culture or people. They are complex human expressions, shaped by long histories of colonialism, inequality, and attempts to assert identity.
Ultimately, it’s rarely just about the land. It’s about a sense of belonging.
The problem is that colonial systems have taught us to equate belonging with exclusion.
Creating “others.” Strangers. Enemies. Threats.
Belonging, Foreigners, and the Construction of the “Other”
Alok Vaid-Menon often speaks about how the categories of “other” and “stranger” are socially constructed, contributing to processes of dehumanization and disconnection. Not because differences do not exist, but because they are often filtered through structures of fear, hierarchy, and separation.
Recognize that a sense of belonging does not have to stem from exclusion.
Quando entendemos que nossas histórias estão inevitavelmente entrelaçadas?
Talvez decolonizar também seja isso. Desaprender separações artificiais. Relembrar interdependências.
Recognize that a sense of belonging does not have to stem from exclusion.
This does not erase cultures or identities. On the contrary. It allows them to exist in a more profound way, without having to deny the humanity of others.
Colonial logic often presents us with false choices: assimilation or separation. But many indigenous worldviews point to another path: relational coexistence.
Difference without dehumanization. Roots without supremacy. Belonging without exclusion.
The ecological crisis is also a crisis of relationships. Indigenous leaders such as Ati Quigua emphasize that defending territory is not just about protecting the land, but about protecting life, relationships, and our collective future.
Colonialism did not merely disrupt ecosystems. It severed bonds—between humans and the land, between humans and their communities, and between humans and time.
It turned land into a resource. And people into productive workers.
And perhaps that is why so many contemporary healing approaches talk about reconnection.
Not out of nostalgia. But out of a living necessity.
No territory exists in isolation
We ask:
- Who are we beyond the boundaries we have inherited?
- What relationships do we choose to nurture?
- What stories do we carry within us?
- And which ones do we want to keep alive?
Here at OGA, we operate on the premise that territory is not a boundary, but a living relationship between bodies, histories, and communities.
Perhaps the future depends less on walls and more on our ability to remember something old and simple:
No territory exists without a relationship.
And that perhaps we were never strangers to one another.
