Native toponymias have been a very little frequented theme in classical ethnography, although the reflection on native terminologies (ethno-taxonomies, terms of kinship, etc.) has been a fundamental axis of anthropological thought in the twentieth century. In this essay we retrace the reasons for this relative disinterest, which can be traced, a posteriori, to the colonial geo-political positioning implicit in the very notion of indigenity. In the light of the results of the studies accumulated over the last thirty years, and of a comparison between the American-Indian and Australian toponymy systems, ethno-toponymies are instead a datum of primary importance to investigate and map ethnographically a native relationship with places taken too often for granted behind the metaphors of “rootedness” and “ancestrality” and recognize, in addition to the very notion of indigenousity, the validity of different native “geontologies”. The claims of native territorial rights have brought out in the last thirty years the political value that these words have in national and international legal contexts in which these rights are negotiated. From this perspective, the increased political-legal agency of the native peoples within the post-colonial nations reveals itself to be strategic in a conjuncture of ecologic crisis, where the agents of the earth (earthquakes, floods, climate changes, etc.) are the most important. etc.) demands a voice and a political listening that seem to be completely at the level of international governance. In this sense, native rights can become crucial for the elaboration of new legal frontiers aimed at promoting and guaranteeing new forms of coexistence between humans and non-humans (including “inanimate” geological and meteorological bodies), shifting the boundaries of political and legal subjectivity.