Historic Victory for Indigenous Rights: Take Action

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About Our Resistance

“Our spears are no longer enough to defend our territory from oil threats. We, the Waorani of Pastaza, recognize the importance of tools like video, digital campaigns, political advocacy and legal strategies in the defense of our ancestral homeland. The “Waorani Resistance” platform and campaign is the result of a collaboration between CONCONAWEP, the organization representing the Waorani communities of the Pastaza region in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Ceibo Alliance, an Ecuadorian indigenous non-profit, and international organization Amazon Frontlines. We have the support and permission of our communities to tell and share our stories with the world. Together, we create and manage content, designs and messages as part of the Waorani Resistance movement, and we make collective decisions on how to best deploy funds raised through this website. Partnership makes us stronger. Although we live in the Amazon and many of you who read this live far away - together, we can achieve great things for the protection of our forests and our cultures, and the planet we all share.”

- Waorani Resistance

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.

Videos

Stand with Waorani
Standing Up for Indigenous Rights
Waorani women suspend court hearing by singing
Waorani People Launch Historic Lawsuit
The Waorani’s Historic Fight
Against An Oil Auction
Waorani Resistance
Waorani, The People

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