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The Honduran Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve has become a place of struggle over natural resources. This paper examines a land contest between the Miskito Indians and the Garifuna, an indigenous group and Afro-indigenous group respectively. The area in question is Lasa Pulan, a one square kilometer of forest and farmland, historically shared by both Miskito and Garifuna collectives. Through discursive analysis, this paper traces contemporary discourse and practice that these actors employ to justify exclusive claims to Lasa Pulan. Such contemporary claims are structured by longstanding colonial and postcolonial racial ideologies that stereotypically label blacks as “immoral” and “violent” and Indians as “ignorant” and “backward. ” This paper argues, through analysis of Miskito and Garifuna claims to Lasa Pulan, that natural resource struggles are simultaneously racial struggles, and it acquaints policy …