Terrestrial (re)forestations: The Laklãnõ-Xokleng struggle in Southern Brazil

This paper will discuss the land struggles and reforestation projects of the Indigenous Laklãnõ-Xokleng community in Santa Catarina, southern Brazil. Drawing on short-term ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in February and March 2024 – as well as a review of existing legal and academic literature – it will argue that their case is significant for understanding the links between climate justice and land claims in the Global South. The paper engages how the struggles for land and the forest involve the intertwining of territorial, juridical and spiritual idioms. Local onto-epistemologies of the forest are mobilised to heal colonial dispossessions and wounds, respond to changing climatic factors, and navigate global climate finance regimes and institutions. The paper engages and advances Fraser et al.’s conception of the “Anthropocene tropical forest” published in The Anthropocene Review. Advancing their ideas on the relational aspects of forests that subvert the nature-culture divide, I propose the concept of ‘terrestrial (re)forestations’. This concept indicates the ways in which Indigenous claims to land and forests require territorial demarcations, though these are interpenetrated with evolving spiritual relations and wider historical and planetary processes.