Abstract

The growing struggle for energy resources manifests as racist dispossession in Indigenous territories. We are witnessing a 21st century where wars over hydrocarbons are intensifying. This year, 2026, the recent invasion of Venezuela exposes this phenomenon, while at the same time, denialist rhetoric marks a setback in the goal of mitigating the climate emergency and achieving an energy transition. In this scenario, Indigenous peoples are leading another cycle of territorial defenses that reveals the close link between decarbonization programs and fossil fuels. This is because electrification plans demand minerals that foreshadow further extractivism. Indigenous rights groups warn that as the environmental catastrophe intensifies, so do colonial relations, and racist discourses are resurfacing with much greater force in the global north. At the same time, they expose the fallacies of green transitions, on which mining extractivism and the rise of wind and photovoltaic infrastructure in indigenous territories of the global south are built and justified.