Territory, identity and territoriality

A reflection from the ground that holds me

When I think of territory, I can’t separate it from what pulses inside me. It’s not just geography. It’s not a line on a map. It’s body. It’s time. It’s memory. It’s that smell that only the wet earth of my childhood has, it’s the sound of the waves carrying more than salt, they carry history, pain, and also a certain joyful stubbornness of those who resist.

Territory, to me, is everything that holds the marks of what we’ve been and, at the same time, opens the way for what we might become. It is not neutral. It is crossed. It feels. It speaks. And sometimes, it screams.

That’s why talking about identity is not just about who I am, but about where I was raised, what shaped me, what I lacked, and also what allowed me to bloom. Identity is formed in relation to this ground. In the pain and beauty it carries. In the meetings it allows and the silencing it imposes.

Territoriality, to me, is the ongoing exercise of belonging. It’s when someone arrives and says “this is ours” not with the weight of possession, but with the lightness of responsibility. Territoriality is how we inhabit spaces with care, how we organize to protect and preserve what is shared. It’s the way our presence inscribes itself in the world and commits to it.

And maybe that’s why I believe regeneration is not just about planting trees. It’s about recognizing territory as a subject, not a resource. It’s about creating space for life to flourish through listening, collectivity, memory, and justice.

Territory, identity and territoriality are not concepts to be boxed in. They are lived experiences. They are marks on the body, paths walked, silences broken. They are ways of existing and insisting.

And this is what I believe in, building a world where territories are respected, identities can breathe, and territoriality is not about control, but care.

Suggestion

Nêgo Bispo, born Antônio Bispo dos Santos, was a quilombola thinker, farmer, writer, and guardian of ancestral knowledge of brasilians. Known for his poetic oral tradition and the concept of counter-colonialism, he dedicated his life to uplifting traditional territories, collective memory, and forms of knowledge rooted outside the colonial logic. His words are seeds of resistance, reconnection, and regeneration.

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