“There is No Territory to Sow”: Urban Coloniality of Nature and Muysca Dwelling

Abstract

Indigenous communities in urban environments experience unique and enduring forms of colonialism. In the city of Bogota, Colombia, the Indigenous Muysca community of Suba experiences urban coloniality through various mechanisms such as displacement, environmental degradation, and epistemicide. Despite having their traditional territories abruptly urbanized, the Muysca engage in embodied practices of contestation through language revitalization, urban gardening, and the occupation of sacred places that have become urbanized. Drawing on ethnographic research with the Muysca of Suba framed within the Participatory Action Research methodology, I explore dwelling as an embodied, everyday experience rooted in place to illuminate the processes through which the Muysca interact with their environment to produce alternative socioecological lifeworlds in the city. These alternative ways of relating to the environment, which I refer to as Muysca dwelling, challenge the logic of the urban coloniality of nature that continues to drive Indigenous dispossession through urban development. By highlighting how the Muysca's embodied practices of dwelling unsettle technologies of urban coloniality of nature, I demonstrate how urban Indigenous temporalities and ontologies are cultivated within the city and reflect alternative processes of Indigenous revitalization and socioecological relations.