From Colonial Natures to Entangled Ecologies: Making Due and Relational Geographies of Indigenous Resurgence in the Chaco

Abstract This paper offers an alternative reading of decolonial geographies by examining how people make due in the context of colonial natures. Drawing on collaborative ethnographic research, we illustrate how everyday acts of reclaiming ancestral lands serve as practices of resistance that foment Enxet and Sanapaná resurgence in Paraguay's Chaco. We foreground the notion of “making due” as central to understanding the Xákmok Kásek community's decades‐long struggle against land dispossession by settler ranching operations. We emphasise material decolonial praxis wherein Enxet and Sanapaná peoples appropriate colonial ranching infrastructures—such as cattle stockponds—to ensure community wellbeing amid colonial violence and the impacts of climate change. We advance a concept of “entangled ecologies” that emerges through the adaptive strategies community members use to thrive in landscapes radically altered by cattle ranching, deforestation, and private conservation initiatives. By weaving details of community‐led land reoccupations, food sovereignty practices, and water infrastructures, the paper advances a relational geographic analysis attuned to Indigenous strategies for survival and flourishing in the entangled ecologies of the colonial present. The paper contributes to radical geography by demonstrating decolonial praxis that is materially and relationally enacted, rather than solely discursively theorised, within contexts shaped by enduring effects of coloniality.