Blog post by Dennis Wiedman, Florida International University, USA and Vanessa León León, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL), Ecuador

Collective identity is often presented in neatly defined categories by governments, NGOs and international organizations, like the United Nations framework to recognize ‘Indigenous’ peoples. Such recognition is often tied to resources, visibility and political leverage. Yet, these frameworks of Indigeneity risk freezing identities into fixed categories. What happens when communities decline these categories?

This question guided our long-term research with the Wuankavilkas, the original people of Ecuador’s Santa Elena Peninsula. Using ethnohistorical methods combining oral histories, community archives, archaeological evidence, participant observation and four years of ethnographic fieldwork, we traced how the Wuankavilkas identify themselves in everyday life and in political arenas.

In our Identities article, ‘Identity fluidity and refusal of indigeneity by Wuankavilkas, the place-based original people of the Ecuadorian coast’, the combination of historical and contemporary sources using longitudinal cultural theme analysis allowed us to describe how the Wuankavilkas' collective identity has shifted fluidly over centuries while retaining a deep connection to land and ancestry.

Blog post by Nicola Guerra, University of Turku, Finland

Climate change is one of today’s most urgent global challenges—but it’s also become a highly political battleground. While environmentalism is typically associated with progressive values in mainstream media and public opinion, my Identities article, ‘The dark green agenda: tracing ecofascist ideologies and identities in Italy’, reveals a more complex and unsettling development gaining attention in academic circles: far-right movements are crafting their own ecological narratives in ways that are both sophisticated and contradictory.

In Italy, where far-right activism has deep roots and growing momentum, some groups are blending environmental concerns with anti-modern, anti-capitalist and identity-based ideologies. This phenomenon is increasingly referred to as ecofascism. Ecofascism isn’t a unified ideology. It’s a flexible constellation of ideas in which nature is valued not for its own sake, but as a symbol of purity, order and belonging – often tied to ethnic, territorial, or cultural identity. At its core, ecofascism sees modernity – especially capitalism, consumerism and multiculturalism – as having broken humanity’s bond with the natural world.