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THE WAORANI PEOPLE’S FIGHT TO PROTECT THEIR FOREST AND THEIR WAY OF LIFE

In 2019 the Waorani of Pastaza beat big oil with a historic verdict indefinitely suspending the auctioning of Waorani lands to oil companies, immediately protecting nearly 500,000 acres of Amazon forest and calling into question the planned auctioning of 16 oil blocks over nearly 7 million acres of Indigenous territory.

Now, the Waorani are spearheading a movement in Ecuador to ensure that Indigenous peoples’ right to decide what happens in their territories is guaranteed.

Led by their representative organization CONCONAWEP, the Waorani of Pastaza are building power in their communities through grassroots organizing and collective action. During the pandemic they survived Covid-19 through ancestral survival strategies, including extensive use of traditional plant medicines. They combatted a surge in illegal logging and gold mining through high-tech monitoring and community based land patrols. They worked to increase families' food sovereignty and ensure more resilient communities. And they began a process to rethink autonomous education of the next generation of Waorani, working with school teachers, elders and children.

This is what Indigenous autonomy looks like, and this is how the Waorani have protected their homelands for thousands of years and aim to protect it for thousands more.