Waorani Sue Ecuador Government to Halt Oil Auction of Their Territory
Carrying spears & chanting songs about defending the forest, the Indigenous Waorani went into court. | Photo: Amazon
Published 11 April 2019
Despite promises to limit oil drilling, the state revealed its plans to auction off ancestral land, Waorani say.
Hundreds of Indigenous Waorani People marched Thursday to a court hearing held in Puyo as part of a lawsuit, interposed by 16 communities, against Ecuador’s government for trying to auction off Waorani territory for oil drilling operations without their consent.
"A prior, free and informed consultation is a fundamental right of Indigenous peoples. However, the evidence in this case clearly shows that the government used erroneous information, manipulation and bad faith in the violation of the constitution and international law," prosecutor from Amazon Frontlines for the Waorani Lina Maria Espinosa told teleSUR.
The court hearing began at 9:00 local time in the Amazonian city of Puyo. The Waorani plaintiffs, accompanied by Ecuador’s Human Rights Ombudsmen and attorneys from the NGO Amazon Frontlines, are facing off officials from the Ecuadorean Ministry of Energy and Non-Renewable Natural Resources, Secretary of Hydrocarbons and the Ministry of Environment.
“We are here to demand respect for our rights as Indigenous peoples and to show the world that the government did not consult us about selling our territory to oil companies. They only flew into our communities and stayed half an hour, they spoke in Spanish and our elders did not understand,” Waorani leader and President of the Coordinating Council of the Waorani Nationality of Ecuador-Pastaza Nemonte Nenquimo said.
More:
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Waorani-Sue-Ecuador-Government-to-Halt-Oil-Auction-of-Their-Territory-20190411-0033.html
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I spent 6 months with this tribe and the Achuar (another Equadorian tribe) back in the 1990's as we helped them organize and map their territory and take on the lawsuit against Petro Equador and Texaco (that eventually got sold to Exxon) for them to clean up the oil waste pits and for them to have control of their territory.
Moi was the elder and leader in their group that I worked with (topic of a book called "Savages" ).
I thought they had eventually won the rights after all the work. At least it looked like that a decade ago.
Now it looks like it is all being taken away and it makes me so sad....for them and for us as humans.
My chosen name on DU is Pachamama because of this work I did with them and what they taught me about Pachamama (Quechua for Mother Earth)....
The earth will not die....but humans will. Pachamama they said would be like a dog and shake us all off like fleas and she will go on, even in a different form. It is about us surviving. And the choices being made indicate that we won't.
