Members of the Indigenous Waorani village of Kiwaro looked skyward as a helicopter hovered over the rainforest canopy in the center of Ecuador and landed in a nearby clearing. Out stepped government officials, there to inform the community about an impending auction of oil rights on their land.
The Ecuadorian government announced earlier, in November 2011 from the capital city Quito, that it would open up for drilling millions of hectares of Amazon rainforest—including the ancestral territories of Waorani communities like Kiwaro.
Following the meetings, Ecuador’s then minister of non-renewable resources opened the oil auction, later telling the media that oil companies’ investments in Ecuador could be worth $700 million.
The paltry consultation process, and the threat oil operations posed to their lands and culture, galvanized Indigenous groups to fight back. In 2019, sixteen Waorani communities and a provincial ombudsman filed a lawsuit in a local court against multiple federal ministries, alleging that the communities’ rights to free, prior and informed consultation were violated.
The people who live on those lands. Why even use such a stupid headline? The question is, “Who WILL decide what happens to indigenous lands, AGAIN?”
Indigenous People of the Land. Its not hard
