| Summary: | This article examines indigenous claimants’ conception of the environment in the context of five cases, which involve land claims, handled by the Inter-American System for the protection of human rights. It evidences the fact that the claimants’ discourse is often based on an “animist perspective of the environment” when their communities’ relationship to the land is discussed in these cases. The claimants’ discourse is used as a reference point to analyze the perceptions of the judges who ruled on these five cases (i.e. the judges of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights). These judges are open to recognizing the values, conceptions and traditions of indigenous claimants. However, this legal recognition has its limitations, as highlighted in this paper. Indeed, the nature/culture dichotomy is deeply ingrained in the thinking of these judges. Finally, the article attempts to explain the complexity of the various discourses in question.
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