Belén Noroña is a feminist political ecologist working at the intersection of Indigenous cartography, territorial feminisms, and grassroots grounded research. Belén is currently collaborating with Indigenous communities resisting oil related contamination and seeking corporate accountability in the Amazon of Ecuador. These collaborations are aimed at bridging and facilitating inter-epistemic conversations between marginalized communities, environmental engineers, and remote sensing experts as we seek environmental justice. Belén’s research engages with Indigenous and rural understandings of place and space such as body-territory acknowledging that our bodies are intrinsically dependent on land and resources blurring the culture-native divide. Belén seeks to take Indigenous worldviews seriously incorporating this knowledge in the production of better science and educational methodologies to be used in the classroom.

Project Title: Body-Territory: Indigenous-Based Research and Analytic Method for Interdisciplinary Collaboration to Conserve the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve in Ecuador

Abstract: Engagement with Indigenous-forest stewardship becomes critical as we experience the adverse effects of the hydrocarbon-induced climate crisis. Still, conservation efforts often overlook the opportunity to integrate Indigenous worldviews into environmental monitoring, remediation, and policy. This proposal aims to develop an Indigenous-based research and analytical methodology that facilitates conversations between Indigenous intellectuals and Penn State scientists, focusing on addressing oil-related contamination in the Yasuní Reserve of the Ecuadorian Amazon. This methodology employs Body-Territory, an Indigenous embodied epistemology that views human bodies as interconnected with ecosystems. This methodology includes a mapping technique that locates the multisided environmental impact of hydrocarbons across uneven geographies and bodies.