Living and sacred Territory is a victim of Colombia's armed conflict: Indigenous legal systems, self-determination and co-theorising law beyond the eco-centric turn

This article examines the recognition of Indigenous Territory as a living, sacred, and sentient victim within Colombia's transitional justice process, centred on the landmark 2019 decision of Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) recognising the Awá Territory, Katsa Su, as a victim of the armed conflict in Macro-Case 02. While this decision has often been read through the lens of the eco-centric legal turn, we argue that such framings risk obscuring the Indigenous legal systems and principles of self-determination from which this juridical innovation emerges. Co-authored by an Indigenous magistrate of the JEP and a legal anthropologist, the article develops a dialogical, co-theorising socio-legal methodology grounded in situated solidarities and convergence spaces, including co-creative audio-visual storytelling. Rather than treating Indigenous legal knowledge as empirical data, we approach Indigenous judicial practice, territorial knowledge and Indigenous legal reasoning, what we term Territory with a capital T, as theory-generating in their own right. Centring Indigenous legal systems and territorial ontologies, we argue, enables environmental law and transitional justice to become sites for advancing Indigenous self-determination and recognising multiple systems of life constituted through human and more-than-human relations, moving beyond the limits of the eco-centric legal turn.