This paper explores the concepts of indigeneity and territory from geography, and their application to recent processes of self-identification of Aymara and Quechua people; and the construction of ethno-territories in Northern Chile, to understand both phenomena within a global process of ethnic differentiation and politicization. To do that, ethnographies, interviews and statistical analysis are used to illustrate the processes and strategies by which the Aymara and Quechuas communities articulate themselves in the context of mining extractivism and neoliberal intercultural policies. Therefore, this paper explains how the indigenous settlements have been repopulated by highly creative dynamics of negotiation/resistance.