On terminology

The label "isolated" does not adequately reflect the status of PIACI or the role they play in protecting critical ecosystems.

Abel and his colleagues at OPIAC do not use the term “isolated.” They speak instead of “Indigenous peoples in their natural state.” From an Indigenous worldview, these communities are not cut off from the world; they are its custodians. Where the Western framing positions isolation as a vulnerability requiring outside protection, the natural state framing recognizes PIACI as holders of intact knowledge about how to sustain the relationship between nature and humankind, which is knowledge that contacted communities have largely lost. The obligation runs in the other direction: it is the so-called civilized world that needs what they carry.

On what's working

The most effective protection is a cordon of strengthened neighboring territories.

In the aftermath of the disastrous contact of the Nukak-Makú people in Guaviare, Abel and the four indigenous territories of the southern Colombian Amazon concluded that the worst thing that can happen is contact without preparation. Their response was to build a protective cordon of four territories working together to strengthen their own governance, knowledge systems, and border management. The goal is not to prevent these peoples from ever entering wider society but to ensure that if they do, the surrounding communities will have built something worth entering.

On barriers

In the Putumayo corridor, illegal extractive activities and other criminal activities are a primary driver of risk to PIACI territories.

Unlike other parts of the Amazon where cattle ranching and deforestation are the primary pressures, the territory Abel works in faces a different set of threats: illegal mining advancing up the Puré River, drug trafficking corridors, and armed groups moving through Indigenous territories as transit routes. As mining extraction intensifies, isolated peoples are being pushed further into neighboring territories. The corridor dynamic makes territorial control both more urgent and more difficult: the threats are not fixed and cannot be addressed through standard land titling or demarcation alone.

On methodology

What's needed is documentation infrastructure, monitoring capacity, and guaranteed resources for the communities already doing the work.

The protection work in the territories has been running for years. What's now needed is the technical and material support to sustain it: assistance in documenting Indigenous knowledge systems, resources to build a monitoring cabin at the headwaters of the Pupuña River, and guarantees that the people carrying out that control are compensated. "Our grandparents, without pay, have been doing this territorial management," he notes. "Now we need resources." Abel describes ACT as an important partner in convening a cross-territory network and fostering collaboration, as well as supporting collective efforts to support cultural and knowledge-documentation work in the region to advance PIACI protection.