Piatsaw The Resistance of the Indigenous Nations of Ecuadorian Amazon

PIATSAW documents the resistance of the Indigenous nations of the Ecuadorian Amazon protecting their ancestral territories from extractivism. For decades, Ecuador’s rainforest has been devastated by some of the worst environmental disasters in the Amazon due to oil spills and industrial malpractice. Legal and illegal mining has left lunar landscapes steeped with mercury and toxic waste. Extractive impunity is currently endangering one of the most biodiverse regions in the world through the poisoning of land and water, irreversibly killing the forest and its people from within. Furthermore, non-consensed government concessions to foreign companies, which spoil communities from their territories, are ravaging the way of life of Amazonian peoples, leaving them also vulnerable to violent criminal organizations exploiting the forest. Ecuador’s Indigenous struggle over the governance of their rightful lands has won unprecedented legal battles against extractive concessions. These include a 25-year successful class-action against oil giant Chevron-Texaco for negligent disposal of over 17 million gallons of oil waste; the Shuar’s legal restitution of lands in Nankints after being attacked, forcibly evicted and legally harassed by a government complicit with Chinese copper mining corporations; and the Waorani’s recent nationwide referendum halting Petroecuador from oil drilling in Block 43 at the Yasuní National Park. By protecting their home territories and biocultural heritage with a variety of tactics, Indigenous nations of Ecuador, like the Kichwa, Kófan, Shuar, Waorani and Sápara, are deterring global warming and safeguarding the Amazon rainforest. PIATSAW comprises seven years (2015-2023) of long stays living with Amazonian communities. My aim is to continue documenting the Ecuadorian Indigenous environmental resistance model that is already being reproduced by other nations in the Americas. The Sápara ancestors say that a powerful spirit called Piatsaw imagined the world into existence; solutions to the climate crisis are challenging us to imagine and feel the rainforest like they do. PIATSAW is a tribute to the unfaltering commitment that the Amazonian peoples of Ecuador have displayed as defenders of their ancestral territories in the rainforest; it is also a testimony of the abuses that they have so painfully endured; but mostly, its an insight on the environmental and cultural extinction threatening Ecuador’s Amazon.

*Piatsaw was the first man, and God, of the Sapara mythology who prophesied the end of the culture of his people

04/12/2018 - El Coca, Orellana Province in Ecuador. Five-year-old Genesis, plays amid Petroecuador’s oil pipes (formerly Texaco’s), running just a few meters away from her home in the outskirts of El Coca in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon. Genesis’ mother, Monica, has cancer, and one of her two other children was born with a congenital disease. Monica says that some nights the racket made by the oil pumping is unbearable. She also claims that five years ago, downstream, these pipes were responsible for an oil spill, and yet, Petroecuador’s staff deny this by assuring everyone these are just water pipes.

18/07/2017 - Nueva Loja, Sucumbíos Province in Ecuador. Donald Moncayo’s hand showing proof of the oil that Texaco negligently dumped around 48 years ago into one of the many waste pools surrounding the Aguarico oil well (AG-04) in Sucumbíos Province. Moncayo, a leading member of the Union of People Affected by Texaco’s Oil Operations (UDAPT), recounts that the oil giant (now owned by Chevron) merely covered up its highly toxic oil-waste pools with dirt and left the land. Texaco's infamous operation in Lago Agrio, where the company dumped toxic oil waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest, polluted a swath of northern Ecuador where hundreds have died of cancer. At least 68 billion liters of toxic waste and 64 million liters of crude oil were dumped on sensitive rainforest soil in an area spanning 4,400 square kilometers. The situation dubbed the ‘Chernobyl of the Amazon' has threatened the lives and livelihoods of numerous indigenous communities, small farmers and countless species of flora and fauna. The UDAPT is a non-profit organization that brings together communities belonging to 6 indigenous nationalities (Waorani, Siekopai, Siona, Kofan, Shuar and Kichwa) and about 80 peasant communities settled in the area contaminated by the transnational Chevron-Texaco. In 1993, the union initiated a class-action lawsuit against the oil company for the damage caused in the provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

27/07/2023 River Jatunyacu, Yutzupino, Napo Province in Ecuador. Devastation of the rainforest around River Jatunyacu in the Napo Province of Ecuador caused by illegal gold mining perpetrated by criminal groups. The excavation pits left behind are dangerously polluted with mercury and other toxic waste. In the latest report by Andean Amazon Monitoring project (MAAP) and the Ecociencia Foundation, Napo was the province with the greatest legal and illegal mining expansion. By 2021, nearly 1,125 hectares were dedicated to this activity, representing an increase of 316% in less than 6 years. The study points out that “mining is already an important direct cause of deforestation” accounting for river pollution, negative impact on Indigenous livelihoods and 46% of the forest loss.

14/11/2018 Kichwa Santa Clara community, Pastaza Province in Ecuador. Young Kichwa men stand guard near the caterpillars set to excavate the forest for the construction of Genefran’s hydro-power plant over Piatúa River. The project did not offer prior, free and informed consultation to the Santa Clara community as it should have according to law. Genefran’s preliminary construction work was halted by Indigenous protesters in defense of the river Piatúa, the community’s main water source. The Piatúa, a tributary of the Amazon located in the Pastaza region of Ecuador, is thought to be millions of years old, home to one of the most biodiverse areas of the world, where flora and fauna is yet to be know. For the Kichwa Indigenous people of Pastaza, the Piatúa river is sacred: it is a living being, revered and feared, loved and protected.

20/07/2023 Parish of Taracoa, Orellana Province, Ecuador. Ligia, 26 years old, in the background, holding the hand of her daughter in the parish of Taracoa, Orellana province, in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Ligia cannot walk. She used to live in the Shuar Community of San Vicente, near the Rumiyacu River, where, in the year 2000, there was a fatal oil spill. Ten months before this picture was taken, she began experiencing dizziness and leg-tingling until she lost her capacity to walk, becoming permanently bedridden and dependent on painkillers that she cannot afford. Her husband abandoned her when the illness surfaced. In February 2023, she underwent surgery in Guayaquil for cervical cancer. Since then, she has been waiting for her medical certificate to confirm her right to receive a monthly stipend of $240 USD from the State due to her 70% disability caused by an illness resulting from catastrophy. A recent study by the Union of People Affected by Texaco’s Oil Operations (UDAPT) confirms that the rate of cancer patients in Ecuador is much higher in provinces with extractive activities.

Aerial view of the town of Shell in the Pastaza Province, Ecuador. This town was named Shell by the first oil company that arrived to Ecuador in 1937. Before the arrival of the company, the region was known by its indigenous people for the presence and hunting of saíno pigs. Now it is one of the largest parishes in Pastaza with 8,000 residents, and the Airport “Amazon River” has twelve airlines of small planes for entering the Ecuadorian Amazon.

18/07/2017 Dureno community, Nueva Loja, Sucumbíos Province, Ecuador. Helmut Scholz, then member of the EU Parliament, looking at Petroecuador’s gas flaring in the distance. His visit to Nueva Loja, Ecuador, together with fellow parliamentarian Lola Sánchez Caldentey, was part of a delegation assessing the environmental disaster committed by Chevron-Texaco. The oil spill due to industrial malpractice, often dubbed by environmentalists the ‘Chernobyl of the Amazon’, is considered one of the worst in recent history.

Reflection in toxic waters in the area around the oil-wrench of oil well #20, abandonded decades ago by the oil company Texaco. Nueva Loja, Sucumbíos Province.

24/11/2016 San Juan Bosco, Morona-Santiago Province, Ecuador. An Airforce Ecuadorian Army (AEE) helicopter takes off from a school’s soccer field in the San Juan Bosco Parish, Morona-Santiago Province, Ecuador. For a few days, the Army made its headquarters in the school to attack the Shuar community residents of Tsumtsuim, who had decided to recover their territory after a forcible eviction from their homes in Nankints on August 2016. According to official reports from the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), the Ecuadorian Army carried out a repressive operation in support of the Chinese mining company ExplorCobres S.A. (EXSA) so it could begin extractive activities in the town of Nankints, Panantza Sector, Morona-Santiago Province.

23/12/2016 Puyo, Pastaza Province, Ecuador. An old woman standing in front of Puyo’s Town Hall displays a banner reading “Shuar people RESIST the mining criminals”. The protest in which she marches called out the government’s military attack on the Shuar community members in Nankints; the persecution of Shuar Indigenous leaders; and the overall militarization of the Morona-Santiago Province perpetrated by a government complicit with foreign extractivism.

28/12/2016 Plaza Grande, Quito, Pichincha Province, Ecuador. Women hands on riot police shields during a clash between protesters and police force in Plaza Grande, Quito. The protest called out the government’s military attack and repression in Nankints that, favoring Chinese corporate extractive activities, maintained a state of exception in the province of Morona-Santiago.

03/12/2018 El Coca, Orellana Province, Ecuador. Pedro, 47 years old, lies bedridden with advanced cancer at his home in the Santa Rosa neighborhood of El Coca town. He and his family are part of the hundreds of victims afflicted by Texaco’s negligent oil waste dumping in the area that is now being worsened by Petroecuador’s oil-rig gas flaring. The Zambrano family receives a $100 USD State compensation for the terminal diseases afflicting three of its members: two children with hydrocephaly and the father with cancer. Five-year-old son (2018) lives with an 82% acquired brain disability while his fifteen-year-old daughter (2018) exhibits a 72% disability.

07/12/2018 Sinangoe Ai’Kofan community, Sucumbíos Province, Ecuador Osvaldo, an indigenous member of the Kofán community of Sinangoe, is wearing a drone navigation visor during a training day for drone use and GPS locators imparted by NGO Amazon Frontline. On October 22, 2018, the Kofán people of Sinangoe, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, won a historic legal battle to protect the headwaters of the Aguarico River, one of the largest and most important rivers in Ecuador: fifty-two mining concessions that had been granted by the government in violation of the Kofan’s right to consent were annulled, freeing more than 32,000 hectares of primary rainforest from the devastating environmental and cultural impact of gold mining.

View of the Bobonaza river from the border of the territory of the original Kichwa people of Sarayaku, in the Pastaza Province.

22/11/2016 Shuar community of Yanua, El Pangui, Zamora-Chinchipe province, Ecuador. Carlos Wilson Tendetza, brother of José Tendetza, a Shuar activist murdered in 2014 for denouncing the mining company Ecuacorriente S.A. Their community is only kilometers away from the large-scale copper mining pit owned by Chinese filial EcuaCorriente S.A. (ECSA) in Tundayme. From 2013 to 2022, five activists (four of them Indigenous) defending the Amazon and their ancestral territories against large-scale mining extraction have been murdered with impunity.

03/04/2019 Sarayaku community, Pastaza Province, Ecuador. On a rainy day, Antonio Mayancha, a Kichwa member of the Sarayacu community who coordinates the project Sisa Ñampi (Border of Life), plants trees along a specific perimeter in the forest. In twenty to forty years, these flowering trees will exceed the height of the other surrounding vegetation and delimit, in air and land, the confines of the sacred Kichwa territory by way of their colorful blooming canopies. This is an example of the manifold tactics the diverse Indigenous peoples of the Amazon implement to protect their ancestral territories. The Kichwa of Sarayaku have fought for the conservation of their territory since the first arrival of oil companies into Ecuador. The community’s resistance has remained a united front defending the rainforest and preserving their biocultural heritage from extractivism. The Sarayaku, also known as "The People of the Midday Sun", owe their name to an ancestral prophecy that saw the Sarayaku as a pillar in the defense of the cultural and spiritual territory of the Ecuadorian Amazon. The Sarayacu are said to be “a beacon of light shining as bright as the midday sun” and the last unfaltering people that will face the extractivist threat.

Aerial view of the Tiputini river, in the nearby Yasuní Scientific Station PUCE, in the Yasuní National Park and inside the concession area of block 16 for Petroecuador's extractive activities.

A family from the Sarayaku Community returns by boat after a Minga. Minga is the highest act of solidarity in a communal society, a tradition of the indigenous nationalities of the Amazon, consisting of community work in which everyone participates in order to support each other. In exchange, they will be offered food and chicha. In this case, a young couple seeks to get the material to put a straw roof on their new home.

04/08/2023 Waorani community of Guiyero, Block 16 in Yasuni Park, Orellana province, Ecuador. Ewene Kemperi, a 29-year-old young man belonging to the Waorani community of Guiyero, passionately talks to the bus driver during his bus ride to the grounds of state oil company Petroecuador. Ewene delivers a solid speech that highlights the importance of voting “YES to Yasuni” in the next National Referendum seeking to halt the extraction of oil in Block 43 located amid the Yasuni National Park. Five years ago, Ewene left his home in Guiyero to obtain an education in the city of Quito and to escape the dangers of alcoholism. Now he has returned with a clear mission: to inform his community and other neighboring ones about the importance of the affirmative vote in the next popular consultation, programmed for August 20, 2023. [As of today, news is the Referendum unprecedentedly won the affirmative vote in favor of halting extraction in Block 43] The relationship between the Waorani and the extractive companies that took over their ancestral territories (a unilateral non-consensed decision from Ecuador´s government) has been marked by regular conflicts, confrontations and homicidal events. Since 1985, Ewene’s community and others have inhabited the oil-concessioned area, known as Block 16, living under the constant threat of eviction. To mitigate tensions and conflicts with the Waorani people, the company offers free transportation services and free diesel and gasoline in a gesture of good will.

11/01/2023 “Socavón” nearby Reventador volcano, on the Coca River in Napo Province, Ecuador. Drone picture showing the “Socavón” near the Reventador volcano in the Napo Province. This downstream devastation, indirectly caused by the Coca Codo Synclair (CCS) hydroelectric dam, was produced on February 2, 2020, due to the unstable flow of water created by the CCS dam. Ecuador witnessed the unthinkable collapse of its highest waterfall. As the San Rafael waterfall crashed into the Coca River, the river’s attrition by domino effect ruptured three of Petroecuador’s oil pipelines within the Cayambe Coca National Park. The oil pipelines of the Trans-Ecuadorian Oil Pipeline System (SOTE) and the Ecuadorian Heavy Crude Oil Pipeline (OCP) that passed next to the river broke, causing a disastrous oil spill where 15,800 gallons of crude oil fell into the river. More than 100 Kichwa communities lost their river, their crops, their food security, and their navigation route. The contamination of the Coca River, which subsequently spread to the Napo, Aguarico and other Amazonian tributaries affected the livelihoods of 27,000 people, that are now forced to consume water polluted with oil, rapidly impregnating their territories. According to a report from the New York times, the CCS dam was built despite all studies and warnings about the unstable geological conditions made more acute by the Reventador volcano in the area. As the greatest energy project undertaken by Ecuador, the CCS dam is also behind one of the biggest environmental disasters polluting the Amazonian tributaries.

24/12/2016 Shariant community, Morona-Santiago Province, Ecuador. Group of Shuar Indigenous people pertaining to the resistance in Nankints during the clashes between between Tsumtsuim community members and the military. They are waiting for the radio signal asking them to deploy to the Zamora River where the confrontation would took place.

Gas flaring well of the Drago oil station, owned by the national company Petroecuador.

Hilario and Luisa's newborn baby cries in his hammock in the Llanchama Cocha Community. Next to him, the objects that Luisa usually takes with her when she leaves the house: a Motorola radio and the machete. Sapara community of Llanchama Cocha, Pastaza province.

24/07/2023 El Coca, Orellana Province, Ecuador. “No more deadly gas flaring”. Message on a wall in the town of El Coca, province of Orellana. Gas flares, a by-product of oil extraction, burn natural gas at an average temperature of 400° Celsius. They have been active in the area since Chevron-Texaco drilled the first commercial oil well in 1967. According to the latest news on gas flaring in Ecuador from sources like Mongabay: “In September 2021, a provincial court [ruled in favor of several plaintiffs] and gave oil companies 18 months to eliminate gas flaring in the Amazon because of its role in spiking cancer rates among local residents. That deadline expired in March, but today oil companies continue to use gas flares more than ever. Before the court ruling, there were an estimated 447 gas flares in the country. Today, there are 475.” The link of cancer to gas flaring has been thoroughly established by medical studies. Gas flaring not only liberates toxic gases into the atmosphere but also pollutes rainwater. Benzene causes chromosome changes in bone marrow cells. Under continued exposure, bone marrow disorders leads to leukaemia and other kinds of cancer. In Amazonian towns around 112,700 people are at risk of cancer due to gas flaring.

02/04/2019 Sarayaku community, Pastaza Province in Ecuador. Six members of the Wio Indigenous Security group of the Sarayaku community, on sentry upon the bridge that crosses the Bobonaza River. Wio is a small ant that lives in the jungle. Despite its size, its bite causes severe swelling, fever and, if near the eye, blindness. Hence the name of the Sarayaku security group. Strategically prepared, they monitor the territory for rescue operations. They protect the board of Taysajaruta (Government of the Kichwa); safeguard elders, women and children; and control the entry of foreigners into the territory. After 25 years of resistance, the community has managed to prevent oil extraction in its ancestral 135,000-hectare territory. In 2012, the Sarayacu won a historical victory in favor of Indigenous rights when the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled against the Ecuadorian government for having authorized oil exploitation in their rightful lands without previous consultation and for militarizing their territory.

04/07/2017 Tsumtsuim community, Morona-Santiago province, Ecuador. Gloria, carrying her son in arms, contemplates from her house the valley that extends west of the Tsumtsuim community, just 7 months after their forceful eviction in Tsumtsuim. On December 14, 2016, the province of Morona-Santiago was declared under a state of exception, following an armed attack by a Shuar group on the Nankints mining camp. The community of Tsumtsuim was attacked by hundreds of soldiers who shot some of their residents. The 26 families that comprised this community were forced to flee, abandon their homes, and take refuge in the steep forest. Currently, in Ecuador, more than 41,769 hectares of Amazon rainforest have been concessioned by the Ecuadorian government to foreign mining companies.

17/07/2023 Juan Yañez community, Sucumbïos province, Ecuador. Attendees at a meeting called by the lawyers of the Union of People Affected by Texaco’s Oil Operations (UDAPT). The lawyers were doing a follow up on a Petroecuador case involving the oil spill in Punta Conejo. Water and soil samples were to be taken as proof of the severity of pollution in land and water. Representatives of Petroecuador arrived together with government officials from the Ministry of the Environment with the news that only a few tests could be run. The UDAPT lawyers did not agree to this, and drafted a document that petitioned the ministry to take samples of all the communal lands affected by pollution.

04/08/2023 Block 16, Yasuní, Orellana province, Ecuador. Drone view of Maxus road leading to oil plant (formerly owned by the Repsol consortium, now owned by Petroecuador) located amid the Yasuni National Park in the Orellana province. The construction of Maxus Road has had an environmental impact that has gone largely unreported: there is constant wildlife collision due to continuous vehicle traffic. Despite the speed regulation of vehicles, there is no monitoring program that corroborates compliance. Field visits indicate that accidents are common given that heavy vehicle traffic providing service to the oil companies on Maxus Road is continuous.

(2018) Kevin will be 10 years old in March 2019. He is the only child of an A'i Kofán community in Alto Bermejo where 3 elders were isolated many hours away in the Amazon jungle. Kevin never knew who his father was and his mother died. He is in charge of the elders, and thanks to the coexistence with them, he has an ancestral, authentic and deep education. His family, the 3 elders, decided that his education would not be that of the common children of the cities, of a "cucama" (white man) and his education will be the direct inheritance learned from the Elders, the ancestral education of the A'i Kofán People. A form of resistance against the extractive activities that threaten the disappearance of their culture.

18/07/2017 Nueva Loja, Sucumbios province, Ecuador. “DANGER”. Yellow hazard tape warning delimits an oil waste pool on the outskirts of Nueva Loja, province of Sucumbíos. The negligent oil waste disposal of Texaco in the area during the time of its extractive activities (1964-1992) has progressively killed the rivers, the land and the people inhabiting the northern region of the Ecuadorian Amazon. These oil pools merely covered by dirt and never removed have not only caused one of the greatest health plights in Ecuador (as entire communities live right next to them) but also compromised the food security of an entire region as growing food goes with great health risks in these areas due to the severity of contamination.

12/01/2023 Rumipamba community, Orellana Province, Ecuador. Temy, 28, fixes her hair in the patio of her house in the Kichwa community of Rumipamba, Orellana province, Ecuadorian Amazon. Rumipamba is a Kichwa Community divided by a road that was originally built by Texaco to transport the crude oil it extracted only kilometers away from these populations (1964-1992). Temy is related to Maria Guinda, one of the first people to sign in favor of the class-action placed against Texaco for the environmental disaster it caused in the area. After Texaco left, state-owned company Petroecuador inherited the already deteriorated pipeline infrastructure and facilities formerly built by Texaco. The area where Temy lives is heavily polluted due to the continuous oil spills caused by old pipelines, still in use, and by the negligent disposal of oil waste into land and rivers. Eventually, Temy, like other people in her community, was attracted by the nearby opportunity to improve her economic situation by working at the Petroecuador plant in Rumipamba. After merely three and a half years of service, she began to lose vision in her left eye, practically lost her right leg to the point she cannot walk except with extreme difficulty, and her hands deformed. A recent study by the Union of People Affected by Texaco’s Oil Operations (UDAPT) confirms that the number of cancer patients in Ecuador is much higher in provinces with extractive activities.

The house of Rosario Ware, 108 years old, is at the Wamutey zone in Tundayme, Cordillera del Condor, Province of Zamora-Chinchipe, in the southeast of Ecuador. Her house is inside the zone of the “Mirador Project”, executed by the Chinese owned company Ecuacorriente S.A. Upon orders of that company and the Ecuadorian authorities, Doña Rosario has been evicted by force two times in the last 13 years. The mining concession consists of 4738 million pounds of copper.

The Government's public apology hung at a public transport stop on the other side of the Zamora River, in San Carlos Panantza. The villagers of Nankitz won in front of the Constitutional Court with the invalidation of the Environmental License for the Panantza San Carlos mining project.

Franco Viteri Gualinga, 49, at the Sarayaku airstrip. He is one of eight leaders accused by the Ecuadorian government of being the leaders of an uprising against public services in Macas, in a demonstration on August 13, 2015, when indigenous Shuar and Achuar took to the streets of the city center armed with spears and confronting police forces. In May 2017, Leaders of all indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador gave their support to demand amnesty for 177 Kichwa, Shuar and Achuar, criminalized for defending their ancestral territories against mining concessions given to foreign companies and defending their indigenous rights.

To the left: The head of the former (Ex) President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, in what is left of a poster inside a Shuar house in the community of Paandin, Morona-Santiago Province. The Shuars are widely known for the practice of reducing the heads of their enemies and protecting themselves from the spirits that remain inside them. To the right: Grandmother Mukutsawa is the President of the Community of Llanchama Cocha, in Zápara territory. All of the community's decisions are subject to her approval. She is one of the few people in the community that possesses a Motorola radio so she can communicate in the territory that the Sápara have under their control and consider as theirs, for being guardians of the spirits that live in the jungle. No strangers are allowed on their territory, because they fear that they could belong to an oil company interested in the extraction and destruction of the place which is considered to be sacred.

14/06/2017 Llanchama Cocha community, Pastaza province, Ecuador. Sápara children from the Llanchama Cocha community mock wrestle after a swim in the Conambo River, near the Llanchama Cocha community, in the province of Pastaza. The Sápara are the ancestral owners of the largest indigenous territory of the Ecuadorian jungle. Around 573 Sápara people live in a territory of more than 3,100 hectares. Historical wars between Ecuador and Peru divided the Sápara between Ecuadorians and Peruvians. The remoteness of the cities, the absence of inland roads across the forest, and a river nearly impossible to navigate have kept this territory, rich in oil, naturally protected from extractive threats.

18/06/2017 Morete community, Pastaza Province, Ecuador. A woman looks through a window into a plane recently landed plane in the community of Morete, amid Sápara territory. Morete, like other communities in this territory, can only be reached by air, since the Conambo River is not navigable at any time of the year. The arrival of a small plane is a special event, and symbolizes contact with the world outside the Amazon. The border wars of 1941 between Ecuador and Peru as well as the Alto Cenepa war of 1995 divided the Sápara between Ecuadorians and Peruvians. The Sápara are the ancestral owners of the largest indigenous territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Currently, Kichwa communities also live in this territory and some of them have begun to consider oil extraction as a solution to their economic instability, without realizing the great health impact, destruction, and pollution that it would cause in their environment. Not far from Morete, in Block 10, a new oil concession threatens the lives of several Sapara and Kichwa indigenous communities, possibly announcing the end of cultures living in close relationship with nature, also threatening the future and integrity of the forest.

14/11/2018 Santa Clara community, Pastaza Province, Ecuador. Smoke rising from a tire fire provoked by protesters in the Santa Clara community, near the Piatúa river. The community did not agree to the excavation of the forest for the construction of Genefran’s hydroelectric plant. Hydroelectric plants damage native river ecosystems by changing the physical, chemical, and biological properties of the river. They cause habitat loss by severely altering water flow (essential for maintaining the species' environmental conditions) and deter the reproduction of fauna. Moreover, they affect human populations that depend on rivers for their subsistence, such as the Amazonian Indigenous settlements, by altering patterns of fishing, irrigation, and navigation, besides polluting the water with toxic industrial chemicals.

02/04/2019 Bobonaza River, Ecuador. Kichwa girl jumping off a bridge into the Bobonaza River during a hot afternoon in the Kichwa community of Sarayaku. The Bobonaza river has not been polluted yet by extractive activities, but if it ever were to be threatened, the entire way of life of the Kichwa in the area would be at risk, as these people depend on the river for their sustenance. The Amazon remains being the largest tropical rainforest in the world thanks to its many tributaries (some of the main ones coming from Ecuador), its rivers supply anywhere from 9 to 30 million gallons of freshwater to the Atlantic Ocean each day. Studies show that, due to human intervention, including mining, oil pollution, hydropower and deforestation, the Amazon suffers the loss of large amounts of surface freshwater. Even small losses of water in the rainforest are capable of altering global water cycles and exposing the Earth to global warming and climate change. By protecting their ancestral territories and rivers, the Indigenous peoples of Ecuador are deterring the destruction of the world’s rainforest.

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