From our ancestral territories, the Nasa people, part of the Indigenous Movement of the Cauca, Colombia, honors the resistance of the Indigenous peoples of Canada.We join your struggles and your genuine actions of resistance against the occupation and dispossession that are being imposed in favor of the multinationals and the project of Death.

The Nasa are an indigenous people settled in the department of Cauca, in the Andean region of south-western Colombia. They mostly live in the municipalities of Toribío, Páez and Caldono, though there are groups of Nasa immigrants in other departments such as Valle del Cauca, Tolima, Putumayo, Huila,Caquetá and Meta.

The Cauca River toponymy –which retains a lot of place names in Nasa Yuwe language– suggests that the Nasa would be native to this region. The term “páez” is the Spanish version of the word pats, “to the right [of the Cauca River]”.

The system of encomienda established by the conquistadors during the colonization efforts undertaken upon the Americas in the XVI century created a labour force of the Nasa people who rebelled against the Spanish domination and put up a fight of resistance that would lead to an agreement with the Spanish Crown in the early XVIII century.

Through this agreement, the Nasa people got certain autonomy in their “resguardos” (indigenous reservations) in exchange for their acceptance of colonial rule and Christianity.


The Nasa people were allowed to mine copper in their territories and earn some money through their handicraft works. But the few rights they were allowed to exercise were restricted even further and, as time passed, the reductions in freedoms and territory became more and more evident.

Their autonomy diminished and their lives and security were threatened. Since the beginning of the XX century the Nasa people have been involved in violent struggles for their rights, autonomy and territory. Many of their leaders have been persecuted and killed and their community organizations, systematically destroyed.
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