War is an experience wherein suffering extends beyond the people, provoking a form of collective harm that is embodied by the other-than-human beings and the sentient places that compose the traditional territories of Indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples. Following the premise that war, just as everyday human life, is always a multispecies effort, I explore what justice means and how it can be achieved in regions where colonialism, state violence, and militarism entangle human and other-than-human lives in a shared vulnerability.

Daniel Ruiz-Serna is Faculty Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. He works at the intersection of Indigenous ontologies, peace and conflict studies, and environmental justice. His book When Forests Run Amok. War and its Afterlives in Afro-Colombian Territories (Duke University Press) received the 2023 Julian Steward Award for the Best Book in Environmental Anthropology. He is the co-editor of Belicopedia (from Latin bellicus, meaning war; and Greek paideia, “education” or “learning”), an illustrated treatise that elucidates some violent episodes of the Colombian armed conflict through the standpoint of animals, plants, and infrastructures.