Introduction
The legal protection of the cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples involves the circulation and translation of categories through a wide range of disciplines, institutions, and social contexts, a process that generates diverse and often problematic consequences. For instance, Esterling demonstrates how Article 11 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) evolved from an ambitious Indigenous draft establishing a new human right to cultural property restitution into a final, ambiguous text void of any real right to restitution. This regression was intimately linked to the translation of Indigenous claims into the human rights framework, which has its own discursive limitations.Footnote 1 This showcases an example of the coloniality of powerFootnote 2 in the context of international law.
Thus, careful attention to how legal categories circulate and transform is essential to avoid epistemic violence and achieve what MignoloFootnote 3 terms “epistemic reconstitution”—the decolonial project of reconstructing knowledge systems that respect rather than erase Indigenous ways of knowing. This becomes most urgent when applied to Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation (PIACI, for its legal acronym in Peruvian legislation) in the Amazon.Footnote 4 As the most vulnerable among Indigenous peoples and the world’s last nomadic populations, their knowledge systems face not just erasure but complete extinction.
Unlike sedentary societies where cultural heritage may be concentrated in particular sites or buildings, PIACI cultural heritage is embedded in seasonal migration patterns, resource management practices, and territorial networks spanning vast geographical areas. Their holistic relationship with landscape—encompassing ecological knowledge, spiritual practices, and social organization—remains entirely unexamined in current scholarship, despite constituting irreplaceable forms of intangible cultural heritage facing imminent destruction. For PIACI, their cultural heritage is intimately interwoven with all their territorial practices.
The absence of scholarship on PIACI cultural heritage is particularly striking given recent advances in Latin American heritage studies that offer insights into epistemic reconstitution. The increased recognition of heritage as contested space, rather than as a harmonious expression of national identity, addresses tensions between state-controlled heritage narratives and Indigenous assertions of cultural rights on archaeological remains. Endere’s analysis demonstrates how archaeological heritage legislation across the region maintains state ownership while systematically excluding Indigenous peoples from decision-making processes, creating persistent “implementation gaps” between constitutional recognition and practical heritage management.Footnote 5 This exclusion becomes particularly evident in conflicts over historical narratives and ancestral remains restitution, where Indigenous communities challenge state-controlled archaeological discourse.Footnote 6 Kania’s examination of Peru’s Qhapaq Ñan project illustrates gradual shifts from top-down “monumentalization” toward more participatory models, while Uribe-Chinen documents the emergence of new heritage ethos emphasizing community participation in policymaking.Footnote 7 Ochoa Jiménez’s legal analysis proposes innovative solutions through interpersonal law doctrine to address cultural property restitution challenges, while Matta’s research highlights grassroots food-based cultural resurgence operating outside official heritage frameworks.Footnote 8 However, this growing body of scholarship reveals a critical gap: the complete absence of research addressing the cultural heritage rights of Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact.
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the protection of PIACI and the epistemic reconstitution of Indigenous ontologies. Although PIACI are present in all Amazonian countries, we will focus on Peru because it established the world’s first comprehensive protection framework, which nevertheless reproduces coloniality in its legal design. In fact, Peru’s pioneering Law 28736, widely known as the “PIACI Law,” conditions PIACI property recognition on “adopting sedentarism as a way of life” and treats territorial protection as merely transitional until contact occurs.Footnote 9 The inadequacy of existing legal protection stems from colonial territorial governance systems that impose arbitrary political–administrative boundaries, as well as sedentarization requirements to provide only transitional protection, contradicting Indigenous territorial ontologies.
Advancing legal innovation to protect PIACI cultural heritage is especially difficult because their cultural practices cannot be directly observed and research should not facilitate processes of direct interaction with these peoples.Footnote 10 For these reasons we will explore the legal dimensions of the category of territorial corridors, an Indigenous-led decolonial mechanism for protecting PIACI’s territorial rights.
The concept of territorial corridors was coined in 2015 by Peruvian Indigenous organizations as a framework to strengthen legal protection for PIACI and has been actively advocated since then.Footnote 11 These corridors are defined as vast areas of tropical forests where a wide range of different PIACI historically circulate and that encompass various overlapping legal categories, including Indigenous reserves, titled native community lands, protected natural areas, and forest concessions. The concept represents a holistic Indigenous conceptualization that challenges colonial territorial management by recognizing the inseparable relationship between cultural practices and territorial mobility. However, for territorial corridors to achieve legal institutionalization they require careful translation into legal categories that preserve their decolonial potential. This translation necessitates fundamentally rethinking state political–administrative boundaries and Western property concepts linked to sedentarization—a profound legal innovation essential, though not sufficient alone, for protecting PIACI.
This interdisciplinary research, from a Global South perspective, stems from a collaborative legal advisory project with the Indigenous organization Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESEP) Ucayali in Peru. This article is based on a comprehensive report from that collaboration aimed at building a legal foundation for recognizing territorial corridors. Our socio-legal methodology combined legal analysis of Indigenous rights (with a focus on PIACI) with anthropological research and a review of key documents from Indigenous organizations.
The article is structured as follows: Section 1 provided context for, and precedence of, legal protections for PIACI, Section 2 outlines the main characteristics of PIACI. Section 3 analyzes the Peruvian legal framework, revealing its colonial contradictions. Section 4 documents territorial corridors as Indigenous conceptualizations and examines the Yavarí-Tapiche case. Section 5 develops the decolonial legal framework for recognizing territorial corridors, including the concept of “itinerant property” and implementation mechanisms. The conclusion explores implications for heritage theory and practice, demonstrating how territorial corridors offer transformative potential for protecting PIACI cultural heritage.
Who are the PIACI?
Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact (PIACI) represent some of the world’s last nomadic populations, maintaining traditional ways of life that have remained largely unchanged for centuries. They are characterized by their strong integration with their ecosystems, limited knowledge of wider society, and a high vulnerability to extinction, particularly due to infectious diseases. They generally avoid sustained relations with outsiders, and peaceful encounters may easily turn violent. PIACI are mainly located in the Amazon region, and to a lesser extent in the Gran Chaco, across countries such as Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Paraguay. Around 200 groups are estimated to exist in the Amazon, totaling about 10,000 people.Footnote 12 Brazil holds the largest number, with 114 identified groups, 28 of them officially confirmed.Footnote 13 They inhabit some of the most remote and inaccessible areas of tropical rainforest, often in the headwaters of smaller rivers.
In Peru, the state has officially recognized 25 PIACI groups through various supreme decrees issued between 2014 and 2022, though actual numbers may be higher due to the inherent difficulties in documenting peoples who deliberately avoid contact with the outside world.Footnote 14 These groups, including the Mashco-Piro, Isconahua, Murunahua, Kakataibo, and others, inhabit vast territories across the Peruvian Amazon, particularly in the departments of Loreto, Ucayali, Madre de Dios, Cusco, and San Martín.Footnote 15
PIACI are characterized by their nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle, moving seasonally across extensive territories according to traditional patterns of hunting, fishing, gathering, and itinerant agriculture.Footnote 16 This mobility is not random but follows sophisticated territorial knowledge systems that encompass understanding of ecological cycles, resource availability, and spiritual relationships with specific places. Their territories often span hundreds of thousands of hectares, crossing administrative boundaries and encompassing diverse ecosystems that are essential for their subsistence and cultural practices.Footnote 17
The vulnerability of PIACI operates across three interconnected dimensions that directly impact their cultural heritage and territorial practices: (1) immunological vulnerability due to lack of exposure to external diseases, (2) environmental vulnerability stemming from their profound dependence on intact ecosystems, and (3) cultural vulnerability arising from unfamiliarity with national society structures.Footnote 18
The heritage dimension of PIACI territories encompasses their traditional territorial practices as a form of intangible cultural property that cannot be separated from the physical spaces where they are practiced.Footnote 19 Their nomadic patterns represent sophisticated cultural knowledge systems that include sacred site management, seasonal resource rotation, traditional hunting and gathering practices, and oral traditions tied to specific landscapes. This territorial knowledge constitutes cultural heritage that embodies what Huertas and others describe as “the close cultural, social, economic, symbolic, and historical relationship that these [peoples] maintain with their territories and the ecosystems and natural resources they shelter.”Footnote 20 The relationship between territory and cultural continuity for PIACI is absolute: Displacement or territorial degradation directly results in cultural loss that cannot be recovered or replicated elsewhere.
PIACI territories face intensifying pressures from multiple sources that directly threaten both their physical survival and cultural heritage. Despite existing legal protections, the state simultaneously projects multiple and often contradictory legal regimes onto parts of their territories (forestry concessions, mining rights, protected areas), creating jurisdictional conflicts that undermine PIACI territorial integrity. Extractive activities represent the most systematic threat, with illegal logging operations penetrating deep into Indigenous reserves despite legal prohibitions. In the Yavarí-Tapiche corridor alone, 103 forest concessions overlap with PIACI territories, covering 1.6 million hectares—many granted illegally by the Loreto Regional Government after Indigenous reserve proposals were submitted, in direct violation of the Forest and Wildlife Law.Footnote 21
Recent monitoring data reveals accelerating environmental destruction within PIACI territories. Between 2001 and 2022, 19,991 hectares of forest were lost within Indigenous reserves, territorial reserves, and proposed reserves, with 72% of this loss occurring in the latter half of the period (2012–2022), evidence of accelerating deforestation pressures.Footnote 22 The Kakataibo North and South Indigenous Reserve has suffered the greatest impact, losing 6,723 hectares, while facing additional pressures from the Federico Basadre highway that fragments their territory and facilitates external incursions.Footnote 23
Illegal mining and drug trafficking have emerged as critical new threats, particularly in the Ucayali region where coca cultivation increased dramatically between 2022 and 2023: 7.5% in Padre Abad district, 18.3% in Curimana district, and significant expansion in Callería district.Footnote 24 Aerial surveillance has documented three clandestine airstrips within the Kakataibo reserve and evidence of narcotrafficking penetration, indicating how criminal networks exploit the remote locations of PIACI territories.Footnote 25 These activities not only cause environmental destruction but also introduce violence and corruption that undermines traditional governance systems.
Forced contacts and violence result from territorial invasions, creating traumatic disruptions to cultural practices and social organization. The 2013 attack on Taromenane people in Ecuador, where between 30 and 50 individuals were killed and two girls were separated from their families, exemplifies how territorial pressures lead to inter-Indigenous conflicts that devastate isolated communities.Footnote 26 Similar patterns of violence have been documented in Peru, where encounters between PIACI and illegal loggers frequently result in fatalities and forced displacement from traditional territories.
These contemporary threats constitute cultural property violations by disrupting traditional territorial practices that embody generations of accumulated knowledge. The destruction of sacred sites, interruption of seasonal movement patterns, and contamination of traditional resource areas directly erode what can be understood as intangible cultural heritage. Traditional ecological knowledge becomes unusable when the ecosystems it governs are destroyed or made inaccessible, representing a form of cultural destruction that parallels the loss of tangible cultural objects.
The disruption of traditional practices extends beyond immediate physical impacts to affect cultural transmission mechanisms. When PIACI are forced to abandon traditional territories or alter movement patterns due to external pressures, the oral traditions, ceremonial practices, and ecological knowledge tied to specific places cannot be maintained or passed to future generations. This territorial displacement thus constitutes a direct attack on cultural continuity and intergenerational knowledge transmission.
Because territorial knowledge systems are place-based, they face particular vulnerability and cannot be relocated or reconstructed elsewhere. Unlike moveable cultural objects that can be repatriated or preserved in alternative locations, traditional territorial practices require specific landscapes, seasonal cycles, and ecological relationships that have developed over centuries. Once these systems are disrupted through environmental destruction or forced displacement, the cultural knowledge they embody may be permanently lost, representing an irreversible form of cultural destruction.
Legal framework and coloniality
Peru has developed the most comprehensive national legal framework for PIACI protection in the Amazon region through Law 28736 (2006), widely known as the PIACI Law, and its implementing regulation.Footnote 27 This pioneering legislation establishes a special transectoral protection regime that recognizes PIACI.
The cornerstone of this protection system is the creation of “Indigenous reserves” with intangible status, designed to safeguard PIACI territories and ways of life.Footnote 28 These reserves represent the primary territorial mechanism through which the state operationalizes PIACI protection, establishing legally recognized spaces where the principle of no-contact and territorial intangibility should prevail.
While the institutional framework centers on the Ministry of Culture as the lead agency, with the Vice-Ministry of Interculturality responsible for coordinating protection measures across government sectors,Footnote 29 the effectiveness of the entire system ultimately depends on the territorial integrity of the reserves themselves. The law establishes fundamental principles including no-contact, self-determination, and territorial protection, while creating mechanisms including multisectoral commissions, specialized registries, and protocols for emergency situations.Footnote 30 Importantly, Peru’s framework includes a sanctioning regime through Legislative Decree 1374 (2018), which establishes administrative penalties ranging from warnings to fines up to 1000 Tax Units (UIT)Footnote 31 for violations of PIACI rights,Footnote 32 specifically targeting unauthorized entry into reserves and illegal resource extraction within their boundaries.
The creation of Indigenous reserves under Law 28736 has been an important part of the strategy of PIACI defenders. As of October 2024, a total of eight Indigenous reserves had been created, with five proposals still pending. The eight reserves created implied around 46,000 km² of area for the protection of PIACI.Footnote 33 However, in September 2025 one of the requested creations was rejected, leading campaigners to accuse the government of violating human rights.Footnote 34
Peru’s framework, despite its pioneering character, remains embedded in the colonial matrix of power that structures Latin American legal systems, reflecting what decolonial scholars identify as the persistence of coloniality.Footnote 35 This demonstrates several colonial design problems that undermine its protective potential.Footnote 36 Most critically, while reserves constitute the central protection mechanism, they are conceived as “transitional” instruments—the legislation adopts an integrationist approach by treating Indigenous reserves as “transitional” mechanisms (Article 2(d) of Law 28736), implying that isolation is temporary rather than a legitimate permanent choice.Footnote 37 This transitional conception contradicts the principle of self-determination and suggests an underlying assumption that PIACI will eventually integrate into national society, fundamentally undermining the long-term territorial security that reserves are supposed to provide.
Most problematically, Article 4(d) of Law 28736 explicitly conditions property rights recognition on the PIACI’s adoption of sedentarism, stating that “property of populations over the lands they possess is guaranteed when they adopt sedentarism as a way of life.”Footnote 38 This sedentarization requirement represents a fundamental colonial assumption, forcing Western property concepts onto peoples whose cultural identity is fundamentally tied to mobility. As legal scholars have argued, this requirement not only violates international standards but also threatens to destroy the very cultural practices the law purports to protect.Footnote 39 This transitional protection model creates legal uncertainty about long-term territorial security by suggesting that protection will only last “while they maintain their situation” of isolation.Footnote 40 This approach contradicts international jurisprudence establishing Indigenous territorial rights as permanent and not contingent on particular lifestyle choices.
Perhaps even most problematic is Article 5.c, which, while declaring Indigenous reserves “intangible,” simultaneously creates an exception allowing natural resource exploitation in cases of “public necessity for the State,” to be determined “according to law.” This provision presents a double ambiguity: First, “public necessity” is an indeterminate legal concept susceptible to broad interpretation favoring extractive interests; second, the referenced implementing law does not exist, creating a legal vacuum that allows various sectoral procedures (none designed with the protection of PIACI in mind) to define public necessity. This exception fundamentally contradicts the intangibility principle and the triple vulnerability of PIACI (immunological, environmental, and social), as any extractive activity within their territories threatens their very survival. Given that isolation itself constitutes an expression of non-consent to external activities, Article 5.c effectively undermines the entire protective framework by providing a legal pathway for the very activities that most threaten PIACI existence.
Territorial corridors as Indigenous conceptualization
While the legal category of “Indigenous reserve,” created by Peru’s 2006 PIACI Law, has been crucial for recognizing and delimiting intangible territories, its efficacy as a management tool is increasingly limited. The primary constraint arises from a growing understanding of the PIACI themselves. In 2006, the Ombudsman’s Office identified only 14 distinct PIACI groups; by 2022, this number had risen to 25 officially recognized peoples. This expansion demonstrates that the PIACI constitute a more significant and complex social reality than was understood when the law was initially enacted.
This outdated understanding extends to the territorial scale required for their protection. The 2006 PIACI Law established Indigenous reserves as the primary mechanism, grounding protection in the principle of non-contact, albeit with internal contradictions. However, subsequent research has revealed that the PIACI inhabit and move across vast, continuous territories that are also shared with settled Indigenous populations (legally termed “native communities”). This has led to the development of a more holistic concept: territorial corridors. Coined by Indigenous organizations in collaboration with social scientists, this concept transcends the state’s political–administrative boundaries to reflect the lived reality of the region’s inhabitants. An academic and advocacy report defines the concept as follows:
A territorial corridor of Indigenous Peoples is understood to be a geographical space that encompasses a series of interrelated territories inhabited by Indigenous Peoples on a continuous basis. Through their recognition and comprehensive protection, the aim is to guarantee the well-being, territories and, therefore, the socio-cultural continuity of these peoples. The importance of territorial corridors for the peoples who inhabit them is accentuated by the close cultural, social, economic, symbolic, and historical relationship that they maintain with their territories and the ecosystems and natural resources they host. […] In other words, through the figure of territorial corridor, it is not only sought to make visible a reality, such as the existence of a large extension of transboundary forests made up of continuous and interrelated territories of Indigenous Peoples in isolation and initial contact, but also to guarantee their well-being, given their high vulnerability and the various threats that put their continuity as peoples at risk. Their well-being is closely related to the maintenance of their life and health, the mechanisms of social cohesion, territories in good conditions, the ability to decide freely and voluntarily the way of life they want to have.Footnote 41
A territorial corridor is thus a descriptive category that captures a complex reality of interrelated, continuously inhabited territories. It refers to a geographical area significantly larger than a single Indigenous reserve, often encompassing multiple Indigenous groups and overlapping legal jurisdictions.
The concept of the territorial corridor gained traction after the PIACI Law was passed. In late 2011, the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESEP) initiated studies to document the existence of what it termed the Pano, Arawak, and Others Territorial Corridor. After presenting its findings to state and civil society actors in 2015, AIDESEP identified a total of three such corridors by 2018:Footnote 42
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• Pano, Arawak, and Others Territorial Corridor (Madre de Dios, Cusco, Ucayali—Peru / Acre—Brazil)
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• Yavarí-Tapiche Territorial and Continuous Forest Corridor (Ucayali, Loreto, Peru / Javari Valley—Brazil)
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• Napo-Tigre and Yasuní Indigenous Territorial Corridor (Peru and Ecuador)
Further research suggests the existence of even more corridors. Soria, for example, identifies a total of seven, highlighting their transnational and ecologically integrated nature:Footnote 43
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• Cacataibo Corridor (Peru): 6,816 km²
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• Ashaninka Corridor (Peru): approx. 17,000 km²
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• Pano-Arawak Corridor (Peru–Brazil): approx. 188,000 km²
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• Isconahua Corridor (Peru–Brazil): 31,399 km²
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• Waorani Arabela Corridor (Ecuador–Peru): 24,324 km²
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• Toromona Corridor (Peru–Bolivia): 28,653 km²
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• Carabayo, Yuti, Aroje Corridor (Colombia): 98,604 km²
The scale of these corridors is immense. The Pano, Arawak, and Others Corridor alone, at an estimated 188,000 km², is substantially larger than England (approx. 133,000 km²). The combined area of the corridors identified by Soria exceeds that of Germany (approx. 357,600 km²). This vast, transnational expanse is overlaid with complex legal challenges rooted in a colonial matrix.
Consequently, the current regulatory framework for PIACI protection is not only flawed in its design but also fundamentally misaligned with the spatial and social realities of these peoples. The reserves it establishes often fail to correspond to the traditional territorial use and nomadic patterns of the PIACI. This discrepancy is further evidenced by the absence of clear mechanisms for coordination between state entities involved in PIACI protection. Such an omission appears to be a direct consequence of a limited interpretation of the non-contact principle, which treats reserves as isolated legal islands. This approach ignores the reality that the regulations of other states project legal effects onto these territories and that various external actors can, and do, encroach upon them, subverting the policy of non-contact.
The concept of territorial corridors emerges from Indigenous ontologies that fundamentally challenge Western understandings of property, territory, and cultural heritage. The nomadic and semi-nomadic patterns of PIACI movement reflect sophisticated territorial knowledge systems that have evolved over generations. These peoples maintain extensive territories that they transit, even crossing national borders in some cases as part of their seasonal migration patterns and subsistence practices. Their territorial use encompasses vast areas that transcend administrative boundaries imposed by colonial and postcolonial states, creating what can be understood as “continuous and interrelated territories inhabited by Indigenous Peoples continuously.”Footnote 44 These movement patterns sustain complex biocultural relationships where “the profound knowledge of their environment allows them to live self-sufficiently generation after generation, which is why maintaining their territories is of vital importance for all of them.”Footnote 45
This territorial fluidity sustains cultural practices that are fundamentally dependent on landscape relationships and seasonal access to diverse ecological zones. Unlike sedentary societies where cultural heritage may be concentrated in particular sites or buildings, PIACI cultural heritage is embedded in migration routes, resource management practices, and territorial networks that span vast geographical areas. As Indigenous organizations emphasize, territorial corridors are essential not merely for physical survival but for guaranteeing the well-being, territories, and therefore, the sociocultural continuity of said peoples.
This Indigenous territorial conceptualization directly challenges the sedentary assumptions embedded in Western property law. Current Peruvian legislation exemplifies this colonial bias by conditioning property recognition on PIACI adoption of sedentarism, stipulating that “the property of populations over the lands they possess is guaranteed when they adopt sedentarism as a way of life.” Such requirements constitute what can be characterized as cultural violence: forcing Indigenous peoples to abandon their traditional ways of life as a prerequisite for legal recognition would sever the spatial relationships through which PIACI cultural knowledge is practiced, transmitted, and renewed across generations.
The Indigenous proposal for territorial corridors thus represents a decolonial intervention that seeks to transform legal frameworks to accommodate Indigenous territorial ontologies. Rather than forcing PIACI to conform to Western property concepts, territorial corridors recognize that these peoples require territories of sufficient extension and quality that reflect their actual patterns of use and cultural practices. This approach acknowledges that Indigenous territorial relationships are characterized by what international jurisprudence recognizes as “traditional possession linked to historical continuity, but not necessarily to a single place and to a single social conformation throughout the centuries.”Footnote 46
The Yavarí-Tapiche corridor exemplifies the complex legal challenges that characterize territorial corridors, where multiple and often contradictory regulatory frameworks converge over territories inhabited by PIACI. The corridor spans approximately 188,000 km² across the national territories of Peru and Brazil.
This corridor’s geographic extension encompasses “five border provinces with Brazil, four of them located in the department of Loreto: Ramón Castilla, Maynas, Requena and Ucayali, and one in the department of Ucayali: Coronel Portillo in Peru, while extending into multiple municipalities across the Brazilian states of Amazonas and Acre.”Footnote 47
This vast binational territory contains a complex mosaic of overlapping legal categories that create contradictory regulatory effects with severe implications for PIACI cultural heritage protection. The corridor encompasses Indigenous reserves specifically created for PIACI protection, including the formally established Isconahua and Yavarí-Tapiche Indigenous Reserves, as well as proposed reserves of Yavarí-Mirim and Sierra del Divisor Occidental.Footnote 48 These reserves theoretically operate under intangibility provisions that recognize PIACI territorial practices and prohibit external interference.
However, the same territory simultaneously contains 23 native communities with varying degrees of land titling,Footnote 49 two urban centers serving as district capitals, Footnote 50 and extensive forest concessionsFootnote 51 that directly conflict with PIACI territorial rights.Footnote 52 As of September 2021, a total of 103 forest concessions overlapped with the Yavarí-Tapiche corridor, “84 in the department of Loreto and 19 in the department of Ucayali,” with many granted in areas specifically requested as Indigenous reserves by Indigenous organizations.Footnote 53
This legal superposition creates what can be characterized as systematic cultural property violation through the fragmentation of territorial networks essential for PIACI cultural reproduction. The granting of forest concessions in PIACI territories has resulted in “constant invasions by illegal loggers, drug traffickers and settlers, who have established camps and transit routes inside Indigenous reserves.”Footnote 54 These invasions disrupt not only subsistence patterns but also the seasonal cycles, migration routes, and territorial knowledge systems that constitute core elements of PIACI intangible cultural heritage.
The corridor’s complexity reflects what Indigenous organizations describe as the presence of “various legal figures (Territorial/Indigenous Reserves, Natural Protected Areas, Native Communities, economic activities, among others) that have as a common denominator the presence and displacement of PIACI.”Footnote 55 This fragmented regulatory landscape undermines the territorial coherence necessary for cultural transmission processes, creating what can be understood as “cultural truncation”—the severing of connections between cultural practices and their territorial foundations.
The cultural property implications extend beyond immediate territorial access to encompass the disruption of intergenerational knowledge transmission. When forest concessions block traditional migration routes or contaminate resource areas, they interrupt the spatial contexts through which “traditional territorial practices as intangible cultural property” are practiced and transmitted to younger generations.Footnote 56 The result is not merely territorial displacement but the gradual erosion of knowledge systems that have sustained PIACI for generations.
Moreover, the legal complexities enable cultural heritage destruction through “institutional dispossession mechanisms in Amazonian Territory”: a set of ambiguities and contradictions in key points of the regulations, criteria adopted by public officials, or loopholes used by extractive industry operators, which lend an “appearance of legality” to the gradual and systematic dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ territories.Footnote 57 For instance, between 2015 and 2022, the Regional Government of Loreto granted 47 forest concessions in PIACI zones covering at least 300,000 hectares, despite explicit prohibitions in forestry legislation.Footnote 58 Such concessions create an appearance of legality that enables extractive activities while formally violating both territorial rights and cultural heritage protections.
The transboundary character of the Yavarí-Tapiche corridor adds additional layers of complexity that reflect the fundamental incompatibility between Indigenous territorial ontologies and colonial border systems. PIACI territorial practices traverse national boundaries that have no meaning within Indigenous territorial systems, requiring access to seasonal territories and resource areas distributed across what are now two nation-states.Footnote 59 While Indigenous organizations have developed collaborative mechanisms for corridor protection, state institutions lack equivalent frameworks for protecting transnational cultural heritage systems.
Current threats to the corridor encompass not only legal extractive activities under questionable concessions but also explicitly illegal activities including the expansion of coca cultivation and associated narcotrafficking infrastructure. These activities introduce violence and territorial control mechanisms that are fundamentally incompatible with Indigenous territorial practices and cultural continuity, representing direct threats to both physical survival and cultural reproduction.Footnote 60
Despite its descriptive power and decolonial relevance, the notion of the territorial corridor remains a concept solely within the social sciences. In 2024, Indigenous organizations decided to promote the legal recognition of this concept.Footnote 61 The following section aims to explore the legal implications of this concept and the mechanisms for its implementation.
From a descriptive to a legal decolonial category
The transformation of territorial corridors, from Indigenous advocacy concepts and social science descriptors into formal legal concepts that underpin a future regulation, represents a critical decolonial imperative in Amazon governance. While Indigenous organizations have identified the vast interconnected territories where PIACI move, the absence of juridical recognition perpetuates colonial frameworks that fragment Indigenous territorial ontologies into inadequate Western property categories. Currently, overlapping sectoral legislation—forestry, mining, infrastructure, municipal—creates contradictory norms that drain legal protection and harm PIACI. This process of juridification—establishing legal definitions, constitutional foundations, and harmonization mechanisms—is essential for challenging colonial legal architecture while creating coherent territorial governance that integrates Indigenous territorial understanding within unified state legal frameworks.
Legal foundations for decolonial innovation
The development of territorial corridors as a legal category finds its foundation in Peru’s constitutional framework, which establishes reinforced state obligations for protecting Indigenous peoples’ fundamental rights. Article 1 of the Constitution establishes human dignity as the supreme end of society and the state, while Article 44 mandates state responsibility for guaranteeing the full validity of human rights. The Constitutional Tribunal has interpreted these provisions as creating a “special duty of protection” for fundamental rights that acquires heightened significance when applied to populations in situations of extreme vulnerability, such as PIACI.Footnote 62
Peruvian constitutional interpretation requires that domestic norms be read in harmony with international human rights instruments ratified by the state, particularly those recognizing collective and non-sedentary forms of territorial rights.
This constitutional duty becomes reinforced when applied to Indigenous peoples, reflecting what the Inter-American Court of Human Rights describes as states’ obligation to provide “effective protection that takes into account their particular characteristics, their economic and social features, as well as their situation of special vulnerability, their customary law, values, uses, and customs.”Footnote 63 For PIACI specifically, this protection must address their triple vulnerability: immunological susceptibility to external diseases, environmental dependence requiring intact ecosystems for survival, and social vulnerability stemming from their unfamiliarity with national society’s legal and cultural frameworks.
International law provides foundations for recognizing forms of non-sedentary Indigenous property. ILO Convention 169 requires respecting Indigenous relationships with territories they “occupy or otherwise use” (Article 13), mandates protecting access to lands “not exclusively occupied by them” with “particular attention to nomadic peoples” (Article 14), and requires respect for Indigenous “modes of transmission of land rights” (Article 17), which can include intergenerational transfers beyond Western civil law frameworks without requiring precisely delimited boundaries. These provisions thus open legal space for innovations that respond to PIACI protection needs while challenging domestic constraints linking property recognition to sedentarism (Law 28736, Art. 4.d).
Furthermore, integrating international standards is crucial for strengthening the territorial corridor framework and anchoring it within broader developments in Indigenous rights law. Articles 11, 12, and 31 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, for instance, address cultural property protection, access to sacred sites, and traditional knowledge—rights whose full realization depends upon territorial integrity. Moreover, the recent UN recommendation to designate PIACI territories as “permanent exclusion zones” for critical mineral extractionFootnote 64 lends explicit international support to the protective logic underpinning the territorial corridor model.
Also, the September 2024 Inter-American Court of Human Rights decision in Pueblos Indígenas Tagaeri y Taromenane v. Ecuador should be taken into consideration. This landmark case represents the court’s first specific ruling on PIACI rights, building upon decades of jurisprudence on Indigenous territorial rights while recognizing the particular characteristics of peoples in voluntary isolation.
The court’s analysis demonstrates significant evolution from individual to collective property concepts, reaffirming that Article 21 of the American Convention protects collective Indigenous property that differs fundamentally from individual Western property models.Footnote 65 Previous landmark cases like Awas Tingni v. Nicaragua and Saramaka v. Suriname established that Indigenous territorial relationships encompass “more than merely a source of subsistence” but constitute “a necessary source for the continuity of life and cultural identity,” with territories having “sacred value” for Indigenous peoples.Footnote 66
For PIACI specifically, the court recognized that traditional property titling mechanisms may be inappropriate because they could violate no-contact principles and fail to accommodate the complex territorial organization of isolated peoples. The court noted that “establishing a registrable title of full ownership would imply a series of obstacles that could put the no-contact principle at risk,” since conventional titling requires contact and formal representation that contradicts PIACI self-determination.Footnote 67
Crucially, the court established that protection measures for PIACI territories must be dynamic and “contemplate the possibility of expansion, in respect of the cultural characteristics and mobility of the peoples and in order to avoid greater conflict.”Footnote 68 This recognition directly supports territorial corridor approaches by acknowledging that static boundaries cannot adequately protect nomadic peoples whose cultural practices require extensive territories that may shift over time.
The decision’s decolonial potential lies in its recognition that existing legal categories may be inadequate for protecting PIACI rights, requiring states to “adapt existing mechanisms” to ensure effective protection. The court’s emphasis that states must develop “appropriate mechanisms to achieve adequate and effective protection of the no-contact principle” implicitly endorses legal innovation beyond conventional territorial protection models.Footnote 69 This opens conceptual space for innovative legal concepts that better reflect Indigenous territorial ontologies while working within existing legal frameworks, such as territorial corridors and itinerant Indigenous property.
The court’s application of the “principle of precaution” specifically to PIACI protection and its requirements for “dynamic protection measures” provides international legal foundation for the comprehensive territorial protection that corridor regulation would establish.Footnote 70 By recognizing that PIACI territorial rights cannot be effectively protected through conventional legal mechanisms designed for sedentary populations, the court implicitly endorses the need for new legal categories that better accommodate Indigenous territorial practices and cultural protection needs.
These international law developments do not only permit but require innovative legal approaches to effectively protect PIACI cultural heritage. The court’s recognition that static protection models are inadequate for nomadic peoples provides powerful international legal support for the dynamic, comprehensive territorial protection that corridor frameworks would establish, setting the stage for examining how territorial corridors have emerged as an Indigenous response to these legal and practical limitations.
In this sense, territorial corridors constitute not only a decolonial response to the coloniality embedded in Western property categories but also a faithful implementation of evolving international human rights standards for Indigenous peoples in isolation.
Legal definitions and guiding principles
While existing scholarship employs “territorial corridor” as a descriptive category for a complex social reality, a formal legal definition must be operationalized for regulatory purposes. Crafting such a definition requires balancing conceptual precision with the flexibility needed to address the diverse territorial realities of the Amazon basin.
From a legal standpoint, a territorial corridor could be conceptualized as:
an extensive, delimited area of Amazonian tropical forest that transcends political-administrative boundaries and contains the territories of Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and Initial Contact (PIACI). The primary legal objective of establishing such a corridor would be to guarantee the protection of these peoples. Consequently, the rights of other populations cohabiting these zones, such as native and peasant communities, would need to be harmonized in accordance with this principal protective aim.
This definition incorporates several crucial elements that distinguish territorial corridors from conventional territorial management categories. First, it recognizes the trans-administrative character of PIACI territories, acknowledging that Indigenous territorial practices operate according to ecological and cultural, rather than bureaucratic, logic. Second, it establishes PIACI protection as the primary objective while requiring harmonization rather than subordination of other legitimate territorial rights. Third, it emphasizes the Amazon’s tropical forest context, recognizing the inseparable relationship between forest conservation and Indigenous cultural survival.
To harmonize the overlapping property rights within territorial corridors, new types of property are needed. The concept of “itinerant Indigenous territorial property” emerges as a necessary legal innovation to address the gap between sedentary property categories and PIACI territorial realities. As PIACI represent the last nomadic human groups globally, existing legal frameworks—rooted in fixed, bounded property regimes—fail to capture their mobile territorial practices. Drawing on Coward’s notion of “dynamic property landscapes,”Footnote 71 as applied by Soria to PIACI contexts,Footnote 72 this concept recognizes territories as mosaics of multiple overlapping property polygons that shift over time—from public to communal to private tenure, from state forests to Indigenous territories. These dynamic landscapes manifest the expansion fronts of national society through various modalities: state services, extractive exploitation, conservation zones, and evangelization efforts, all creating complex tenure mosaics through land-use change requests and forest rights allocations that overlay traditional PIACI territories.
Itinerant Indigenous territorial property is thus defined as territories where PIACI move historically as part of their organizational forms and spiritual and subsistence activities. This property form transcends Western real property categories by recognizing that when PIACI temporarily traverse lands titled to settled native communities during their seasonal movements, they retain rights to remain and use resources without putting into question the underlying rights of the settled native communities. This juridical flexibility respects PIACI nomadism while protecting both mobile and sedentary Indigenous peoples. The concept challenges the integrationist logic embedded in current legislation—which conditions property recognition on “adopting sedentarism as a way of life”—and instead proposes a pluralistic property regime that acknowledges mobility as constitutive of PIACI territorial rights rather than an obstacle to legal recognition.
A future legal framework for territorial corridors must be grounded in explicitly decolonial legal principles. Such principles should not only challenge the legacy of colonial territorial management but also provide practical guidance for implementation. To this end, we propose a set of guiding principles designed to orient both legislative design and administrative practice.
The principle of intangibility presumption establishes that any area within a territorial corridor lacking prior authorization for resource exploitation shall be presumed intangible, under the same terms as Article 5 of the PIACI Law. By doing so, it shifts the burden of proof from Indigenous peoples to the proponents of resource extraction, who must demonstrate unequivocally that proposed activities will not impinge upon PIACI rights before any authorization can be considered. This presumption strengthens the preventive dimension of territorial protection and ensures that legal uncertainty is resolved in favor of the most vulnerable populations.
The principle of non-renewal prohibits the renewal of licenses or other enabling titles that overlap with Indigenous reserves, whether already established or in the process of being established. Its objective is to eliminate the legal fiction that allows extractive concessions to be perpetually extended regardless of their impact on Indigenous rights. By preventing the automatic renewal of such titles, this principle creates a clear legal horizon for resolving existing conflicts and for ensuring that illegal overlaps are progressively phased out as current authorizations expire.
The principle of proportionality requires that state authorities balance PIACI rights against other legitimate interests while establishing a clear hierarchy when reconciliation proves impossible. Given the extreme vulnerability and risk of extinction faced by these peoples, any decision affecting them must prioritize the rights to life, health, and physical integrity over competing economic interests. This principle operationalizes the Constitutional Tribunal’s doctrine on the hierarchy of fundamental rights and provides a practical guide for resolving territorial conflicts in cases where PIACI protection and extractive activities are in tension.
The principle of cultural identity guarantees the right of PIACI to maintain, develop, and strengthen their cultural identity—including their customs, traditions, cosmovision, and social organization—free from external pressure. It explicitly rejects the assimilationist logic embedded in policies such as the sedentarism requirement found in the current PIACI Law, thereby recognizing nomadic and semi-nomadic ways of life as legitimate cultural expressions deserving full legal protection. In doing so, it aligns national legal interpretation with contemporary international human rights standards on cultural diversity and self-determination.
Finally, the principle of subsistence guarantees the right of PIACI to maintain their traditional forms of subsistence and their relationship with the environment, ensuring the integrity of their territories and natural resources. This principle recognizes that PIACI cultural survival depends on access to the full range of resources and landscapes that sustain their seasonal cycles. Consequently, it demands the protection of entire territorial networks rather than fragmented reserves, reinforcing the ecological and cultural continuity essential to their existence.
Intercultural implementation mechanisms
The effective implementation of territorial corridors requires comprehensive normative harmonization that addresses the systematic contradictions currently undermining PIACI protection. The complete derogation of Article 5.c of the PIACI Law represents a crucial first step, eliminating the “public necessity” exception that fundamentally contradicts the principle of intangibility. This provision creates a permanent legal vulnerability that enables extractive activities incompatible with PIACI survival, and its mere existence undermines legal certainty by inviting continuous challenges to territorial protection. International jurisprudence recognizing isolation as an expression of non-consent supports the establishment of absolute intangibility without exception.
Sectoral harmonization must address the proliferation of contradictory authorizations that fragment Indigenous territories while providing apparent legal cover for extractive activities. The prohibition on granting new forestry concessions, mining rights, or hydrocarbon blocks within territorial corridors would be complemented by non-renewal of existing titles as they expire, creating a clear trajectory toward eliminating extractive activities from PIACI territories. Similarly, prohibitions on road infrastructure development and new municipalities creation within corridors would prevent the territorial fragmentation that facilitates future invasions.
The Peruvian National Registry of Public Records (SUNARP) reform represents a crucial component of territorial corridor implementation, prohibiting the registration of property titles whose cadastral location overlaps with corridor areas. This measure addresses the systematic use of fraudulent property registration to legitimize territorial invasions while creating legal clarity about territorial boundaries. The exception for native community titles already in process before corridor establishment ensures that legitimate Indigenous territorial rights receive protection while preventing new invasions.
It is also necessary to create a national system for monitoring, evaluation, and early warning for PIACI protection. This would represent a crucial innovation for territorial corridor management, combining technological tools with Indigenous knowledge systems to enable rapid response to emerging threats. This system would implement territorial surveillance and environmental monitoring mechanisms within corridors, develop early warning systems for preventing forced contacts and territorial invasions, and elaborate annual reports on PIACI situations and protection measure effectiveness. Importantly, the system would include Indigenous organizations as full participants rather than merely consulted parties, recognizing their expertise in territorial management and threat identification.
Transboundary coordination mechanisms are also needed to address the international character of several territorial corridors, particularly the Yavarí-Tapiche and Pano-Arawak corridors that span Peru–Brazil borders. Actions are needed that lead to treaty approval with Amazonian countries for protecting transboundary territorial corridors and harmonizing national PIACI protection legislation. Such coordination builds on existing collaboration between Indigenous organizations across borders, formalizing their protective efforts while creating state-level support for territorial integrity.
The strengthened sanctioning regime extends beyond current administrative penalties to encompass both civil and criminal responsibilities for territorial corridor violations. The expansion of Legislative Decree 1374 to cover territorial corridors would address the current limitation to Indigenous reserves alone, while the creation of new criminal offenses specifically addressing forced contact with PIACI would fill a crucial gap in legal protections, as recommended by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.Footnote 73
Conclusions: Implications and future directions
This research demonstrates how territorial corridors can be transformed from an Indigenous concept into a decolonial legal category that reconceptualizes cultural heritage protection for peoples in voluntary isolation. We focused on Peru, as it established the world’s first comprehensive PIACI protection framework through Law 28736 yet paradoxically exemplifies colonial contradictions that undermine such protection—making it ideal for examining both current failures and decolonial alternatives. The Yavarí-Tapiche corridor reveals that for PIACI, cultural heritage is embodied in movement itself—in seasonal migration routes encoding ecological knowledge, resource management transmitted through spatial practice, and spiritual relationships enacted across territorial networks. The illegal granting of 103 forestry concessions overlapping Indigenous reserves represents systematic destruction of living heritage systems where each blocked route severs intergenerational knowledge transmission.
The concept of “itinerant Indigenous territorial property” challenges the sedentary bias in property law and heritage frameworks. Peru’s Law 28736, conditioning property recognition on “adopting sedentarism as a way of life,” exemplifies how colonial legal categories function as cultural erasure. The territorial corridor proposal inverts this logic, recognizing mobility as irreplaceable intangible heritage requiring legal accommodation. This shifts from viewing nomadism as transitional to understanding it as a sophisticated cultural system deserving permanent protection.
The 2024 Inter-American Court decision in Tagaeri and Taromenane v. Ecuador provides juridical foundation for this reconceptualization. The court’s recognition that conventional titling violates the no-contact principle while failing to accommodate PIACI territorial organization opens space for alternatives. Territorial corridors operationalize this vision by preserving cultural practices in situ—maintaining the inseparable relationship between movement, ecological knowledge, and spiritual practice that defines PIACI biocultural heritage.
Current frameworks fragment PIACI territories through contradictory regulatory regimes that treat land as a commodity rather than cultural landscape, systematically severing connections between cultural practices and territorial foundations. The Yavarí-Tapiche case exemplifies this: 23 native communities, two urban centers, and extensive concessions overlay territories essential for PIACI cultural reproduction. Territorial corridors offer an integrated alternative recognizing landscape as living heritage, where seasonal routes and sacred sites form interconnected systems that cannot be preserved piecemeal. This represents a fundamental epistemological reconstitution that challenges Western knowledge hierarchies by centering Indigenous ways of knowing territory and heritage.
This research contributes three theoretical innovations: processual heritage constituted by movement rather than fixed practices, biocultural indivisibility where ecological knowledge and territorial management are inseparable, and decolonial heritage governance centering Indigenous ontologies. These suggest heritage protection must evolve beyond preserving objects to maintaining relational systems through which culture is transmitted, contributing to the epistemological reconstitution essential for decolonizing heritage governance.
The intercultural governance models embedded within corridors move beyond consultation toward co-management, recognizing Indigenous organizations as heritage custodians with decision-making authority and integrating Indigenous knowledge into monitoring systems. Future research should examine comparative approaches across Amazonian countries, develop intercultural indicators for monitoring biocultural heritage integrity, and investigate climate change impacts on PIACI cultural heritage.
As extractive pressures intensify and narcotic trafficking expands, the window for protecting these unique cultural systems is rapidly closing. The territorial corridor model demonstrates that decolonial heritage governance is urgently practical. By recognizing territories as living heritage and mobility as cultural practice, this approach protects not just physical survival but irreplaceable knowledge systems essential for Amazonian futures. The transformation from Indigenous concept to legal category offers a pathway for repatriating heritage governance to legitimate custodians while demonstrating how legal systems can evolve to protect cultural diversity in all forms—including those existing in motion, in relationship, and in the conscious choice to remain apart.
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