Amazon tribe protests Ecuador’s oil exploration plans

With painted faces and wearing tufts of multicolored feathers, traditionally dressed Waorani people marched through the streets of the town of Puyo to the provincial courthouse, where a legal bid to halt the process began Thursday.

“They have come from far away to make their claim,” said Nemonte Nenquimo, head of the Coordinating Council of the Waorani Nationality.

Some, she said, had been “walking for eight hours. Some came in canoes for about three days.”

The marchers represented 16 Waorani communities scattered across the dense Amazonian jungle in the north of Ecuador’s vast Pastaza province.

At stake is some 180,000 hectares of ancestral lands. Puyo, the provincial capital, is located on the eastern edge of Ecuador’s Amazon basin.

– ‘The jungle is our life’ –

Under a large banner that read “The jungle is our life. No more oil,” the procession marched to the courthouse for the start of a hearing in their suit taken to protect their constitutional rights to the land.

The Waoranis are seeking to prevent the Ministry of Energy and Non-Renewable Natural Resources, and the Ministry for the Environment to sell exploration licences to big oil companies.

It seeks to keep the jungle area of Pastaza free of all oil exploration activities, said Nenquimo.

The Waorani, who number around 3,000, also inhabit other Amazonian provinces. Nenquimo said they had come to Puyo to ensure the state respects their lands, where she said “they live freely, healthy and happy.”

The lands are protected under Ecuador’s constitution that establishes the “inalienable, unseizable and indivisible” rights of indigenous people “to maintain possession of their ancestral lands and obtain their free adjudication.”

Former social democrat president Rodrigo Borja handed over title to some one million hectares to indigenous communities during his 1988-1992 presidency. Crucially, however, the wealth in the subsoil is owned by the state.

The constitution also enshrines the need for prior consultation on any plans to exploit the underground resources, given the probable environmental and cultural impacts on tribal communities.

The state reached an agreement with the Waorani over oil exploration in 2012, but the tribe’s leaders say they were duped.

“The state in 2012 violated our rights of free, prior and informed consultation. The government trying to sell our lands,” said Waorani spokesman Oswando Nenquimo.

The Waorani people — including two clans that remain in voluntary isolation and are enemies among themselves — are seeking court protection to avoid an oil bidding process developing, until a new consultation process can be agreed.