Chapter VII. Indigenous public policies based on the indigenous peoples’ own knowledge systems in Colombia

This chapter analyzes the relationship between indigenous knowledge systems, indigenous justice, the spiritual governance of the territory, and the design of contemporary public policies, from a critical perspective grounded in the Law of Origin and in water as the organizing principle of life, authority, and social organization. It examines how modern state institutions, by imposing an instrumental rationality, fragment the links between nature, justice, spirituality, and power, thereby weakening indigenous territorial autonomy. The approach integrates ancestral knowledge, legal-political analysis, and a critique of state planning models, understanding justice not as a punitive mechanism but as a process of harmonization that restores the balance between human beings, nature, and spiritual forces. Within this framework, water is understood as a living entity, the axis of governance, the memory of the territory, and the foundation of ancestral political order. From this perspective, the operation of public policies on the environment, land use planning, and development—under extractive, sectoral, and despiritualized logics—is problematized. The chapter highlights the structural incompatibility between the justice of structure—characteristic of the modern state—and the justice of spirality—characteristic of indigenous peoples—where norms emerge from the community fabric, ritual, the spoken word, and spiritual consensus. The proposal thus calls for a rethinking of public policy based on the full recognition of indigenous governance systems as legitimate and autonomous political orders. Finally, it advocates for an intercivilizational dialogue that allows us to rethink the state, justice, and development from an ethic of caring for life, in which indigenous survival, the protection of water, and territorial integrity form the core of any democratic and ecological political project.