Ontology in action Ecocentrism as defence of place in Indigenous social movement practices, South Africa

Developmental projects such as mining, tourism and agriculture by the state and local elites continue to pose threats to sacred sites of Indigenous VhaVenda communities in the Limpopo Province, South Africa. In the post-apartheid era, defence of these places by rural social movements in Venda was initially done in the context of official land reform programmes. Recent efforts by Indigenous social movements to preserve sacred sites mark a shifting articulation away from state-oriented reclamation of land rights towards an eco-centric defence of place that invokes Indigenous ontology. Building on five months of embedded fieldwork in 2022 with grassroots social movement Dzomo la Mupo, this chapter discusses how Indigenous ontology is operationalised into social movement strategies and articulated through new alliances. The chapter focusses in particular on a distinct set of NGO practices such as eco-mapping, a communal mapping exercise in which mupo, the Indigenous concept for nature, is foregrounded. Eco-mapping is constitutive of a certain political ontology and illustrates how grassroots NGOs articulate community claims through local to global networks of Indigenous solidarity. In conclusion, the chapter explores whether we are witnessing an alternative political ecology and effective resistance to current extractivist, developmental projects.