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How are progressive governments in South America attempting to reconcile natural resource development with respect for Indigenous rights? This paper addresses this challenge. Growing academic and public concern over the environmental and social impacts of extractive industries, such as mining, oil, and gas operations, has led to highly polarized debates over the topic of sustainable mining and whether or not extractive industries can address the development needs of local communities. Paradoxically, the governments of Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador have simultaneously advanced Indigenous rights and deepened their countries’ dependence on the extractive sector. Based on a comparison of the successful protest movement against the TIPNIS highway project in Bolivia with the unsuccessful bid to keep the oil in the soil in Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park, the paper argues that governments have utilized an Indigenous rights discourse, such as promoting “living well,” to advance their neo-extractivist agendas.
