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EPISODE 5 : THE AMAZONIAN AMERINDIANS AGAINST OIL EXPLOITATION

The indigenous people of the sacred basins of the Amazon are calling on the international community for help in the face of the risk of increased oil exploitation.

The Amerindians of the Amazon basin in Ecuador and Peru are appealing to the international community for help. They are afraid that the Covid-19 pandemic will become a pretext to restart oil drilling in their region.

Domingo Peas, the coordinator of the campaign to protect the sacred basins of the Amazon, and other indigenous leaders have approached Reuters to highlight their fight against climate change. They are also defending their ancestral knowledge. “We have been taking care of our rainforest all our lives, so we invite everyone to share this awareness.”

Domingo Peas is a member of the Achuar nation (18,000 people), one of the 20 peoples that make up the 500,000 indigenous people who live in this region up the Amazon between Ecuador and Peru. The leader suggests that their struggle benefits the whole planet, especially the new generations:

“For the young people of the world, who are in the modern world, many believe that the forest is so far away that it has no effect on climate change. Now the great scientists know that the greatest role of the Amazon is that it cleans the air for the whole continent. So it’s important to stop extracting oil, because oil and mining is destroying the river.

In the past, leaking oil pipelines have contaminated rivers from which the natives drew their drinking water, endangering humans and animals.

Towards an increase in oil exploitation

Oil and gas deposits are spread over 725,000 km2 of the Amazon basin. Although only 7% of these deposits are currently in use, the Ecuadorian and Peruvian authorities would like to exploit 40% more. The indigenous people fear that this desire will be exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis, which has greatly weakened the economies of the countries in the region.

This is what Tuntiak Katan, a member of the Shuar autonomous community and vice-coordinator of COICA (Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin) fears: “With the justification that it is necessary to revive the country’s economy, the most affected areas will be these, because there will be more intense extractive activities, via oil production and mining. So the environmental and socio-cultural pressure will be very strong. It may perhaps cause a problem, more serious than what we are experiencing. This is a fundamental danger!”

TIAM, a philosophical alternative

Tuntiak Katan deplores the fact that in 50 years Ecuador and Peru have not found another system of economic development, that there has been no investment in less harmful alternative energies. Instead of a model that “harms indigenous people, damages their living spaces, their sacred spaces” and “water, vital for Humanity”.

Faced with this observation, the Kichwa Indians of Sarayaku in Ecuador have also launched an appeal to consider TIAM, their ethical and philosophical concept. José Gualinga represents the indigenous peoples in the province of Pastaza, one of the most extractivist in the country. He explains this thought: “As humanity questions the dominant perspective on the world and opens its eyes to alternatives, we, the People of Sarayaku, invite people to hear our philosophy of TIAM. If human beings accept this Pachamama-compliant way of life, the wounds of the planet will heal and life will be reborn. At the heart of our philosophy are concepts that keep coming up in public debates because of the pandemic: the importance of solidarity, the recovery of a natural world, interconnectivity, the need to prioritize life and not profit.”

This pillar of resistance to extractivism defends the idea of the “Selva vivante”. He suggests that if humans were more respectful of the Earth, it would give it back to them. “TIAM is an alternative to the dominant cosmology that sees nature as “other”, as an object of exploitation. This vision has led to climate imbalance and change, as well as the current pandemic. More than ever, we believe that humanity must learn to feel the earth again, to recognize and declare the seas, glaciers, volcanoes, as living beings; to feel that it coexists within us, to remember that we are nature.”

In this family of three generations of resistance fighters, Patricia Gualinga was awarded the prize for environmental activism, in May 2019, at the International Environmental Film Festival in the Canary Islands. She also defends this cosmogony as an ambassador for the rights of nature. As an eco-feminist, Patricia advocates for a feminine art of resistance, composed of transparency, intuition and a language of truth. Her watchword, “No to destruction and yes to life on the planet.

Her portrait can be found on Native women voices.

Read : Amazonia: call from the Amerindians for a “global alliance” against oil exploitation

Picture Misha Vallejo

The emblematic Sarayaku bridge was destroyed by floods linked to climate change, according to the Indians.

Océane Segura

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