<
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-rainforest-indigenous-peoples-justice-stewardship/>
"In 2025, a small, indigenous nation that calls itself the “people of many
colors” will go home for the first time in 80 years. Their return will drive a
movement of indigenous peoples across the Amazon rainforest fighting for legal
titles to their ancestral territories, and winning. These victories will have
global significance.
The Siekopai lived for centuries along what is now the border between Ecuador
and Peru in the western Amazon. In the 1500s, they were a powerful civilization
with their own unique varieties of corn and an army capable of defeating the
Portuguese conquerors and stopping their advance. Later, however, they were
decimated by disease, enslaved by rubber tappers, and forcibly relocated to
Jesuit missions. Approximately 80 years ago, a war between Ecuador and Peru
displaced the remaining Siekopai. When the years of conflict waned, in 1979, a
new, if contested, border cut through their homelands. The Siekopai now number
about 1,950 survivors, with 750 in Ecuador and 1,200 in Peru.
In Ecuador, indigenous nations are in a landlord-tenant agreement with the
Ministry of the Environment. There are now nearly 5 million acres of indigenous
rainforest territories locked in “protected areas” within the Ministry of
Environment’s control. This gives the government, for instance, the power to
grant drilling rights, as it did in the Yasuní National Park, or to change the
nature of the tenant agreement, which they did when the Cuyabeno Wildlife
Reserve was created, denying indigenous people the right to hunt, fish, or
garden and effectively making them trespassers in their own land.
In Peru, the government leases land to indigenous communities indefinitely for
various uses based on the type of soil. Only 20 percent of the indigenous area
is recognized as Siekopai property, while the remaining 80 percent is
designated as state-owned forest lands, and are “on loan” from the state.
Recently, however, the Siekopai have successfully challenged the legality of
these titling laws—the legal process that results in the recognition of the
right to property of indigenous people to their ancestral lands—and have
already won two major legal victories in Ecuador and Peru. In 2021, the
Siekopai received land titles to more than 500,000 acres of their lands in
Peru. In September 2022, the Siekopai filed a suit against the government of
Ecuador to regain ownership over Pë’këya, part of their ancestral territory
located along the border. In November 2023, an Ecuadorian appeals court ruled
in favor of the Siekopai, granting them legal title to another 100,000 acres of
labyrinthine flooded forests and blackwater lagoons in the heart of their
ancestral homelands, and marking the first time the government would issue land
title to an indigenous peoples whose territory was located inside a protected
area.
In 2025, working together with Amazon Frontlines and the Ceibo Alliance—allied
organizations with the mission to protect both the headwaters of the Amazon
rainforest and indigenous autonomy—the Siekopai will further expand their land
titles and create a pathway to permanently protect nearly 5 million acres of
rainforest within national parks in Ecuador. In Peru, they’re going to
dismantle the legal and political barriers to titling an estimated 40 million
acres of ancestral indigenous territory in the Amazon. These landmark victories
will set a legal precedent for millions of other indigenous people across the
Amazon and hopefully allow them to return to their ancestral lands."
Via
Fix the News:
https://fixthenews.com/280-murderbot/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
