ANDES is a small international indigenous non-profit organization working to support indigenous peoples in their struggles for rights, locally-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems, and endogenous development based on their core values. The majority of ANDES’ work is carried out in the Andean region, with some activities in Latin America, Africa and Asia. ANDES’ unique experience arises from its complementary work at the local and global levels, which encourages analysis and reflection on biocultural realities within local-global relations and a rights-based approach. These relationships are addressed within a political-ecology approach that explicitly connects issues of human–environment interactions with power and inequality. This approach provides a framework for a biocultural methodology, applied to the creation of evidence based on local experiences and biocultural processes, illustrating how human adaptability and local level human–environment interactions are key to understanding higher scale processes and broader political–economic forces.