#Indigenous Leader #NemonteNenquimo on Fight to Defend #Ecuador’s Ban on Future #Amazon #OilExtraction

via #DemocracyNow, November 29, 2024

"In Part 2 of our special broadcast, we look at a recent victory for Indigenous communities in Ecuador, where people overwhelmingly voted to approve a referendum last year banning future oil extraction in a biodiverse section of the Amazon’s Yasuní National Park — a historic referendum result that will protect Indigenous Yasuní land from development. But the newly elected president, Daniel Noboa, has said Ecuador is at war with gang violence and that the country is 'not in the same situation as two years ago.' Noboa has said oil from the Yasuní National Park could help fund that war against drug cartels. Environmental activists and Indigenous peoples say they’re concerned about his comments because their victory had been hailed as an example of how to use the democratic process to leave fossil fuels in the ground. 'Amazonian women are at the frontlines of defense,' says Nemonte Nenquimo, an award-winning Waorani leader in the Ecuadorian Amazon who co-founded Amazon Frontlines and the Ceibo Alliance. Her recent piece for The Guardian is headlined 'Ecuador’s president won’t give up on oil drilling in the Amazon. We plan to stop him — again.' Nemonte has just published her new memoir titled We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People. We also speak with her co-author and partner, Mitch Anderson, who is the founder and executive director of Amazon Frontlines and has long worked with Indigenous nations in the Amazon to defend their rights."

Watch / listen / read transcript:
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/11/29/indigenous_leader_nemonte_nenquimo_on_fight

#ViewerSupportedNews #AmazonRiverBasin #WaterIsLife #LandDefenders #Yasuní #Waorani #IndigenousPeople #YasuníNationalPark #EnvironmentalActivists #WeWillBeJaguars #BigOil #CorporateColonialism #AmazonFrontlines #CeiboAlliance #Biodiversity

#NemonteNenquimo, #Waorani, Protecting the #AmazonRainforest

By Water for Life, via #CensoredNews, Sept. 21, 2024

"Our friend Nemonte Nenquimo, a leader of the Waorani people of #Ecuador, telling stories from her memoir, 'We Will Be Jaguars.' The book, written with her husband Mitch Anderson, about the fight to protect the Amazon rainforest, is a must read. The conversation was masterfully guided by actor, author, teacher Peter Coyote.

"Nemonte and Mitch have more readings coming up in San Francisco and Corte Madera later this week. New York City is next week!"

From Meet Nemonte Nenquimo:

"Nemonte Nenquimo led an indigenous campaign and legal action that resulted in a court ruling protecting 500,000 acres of Amazonian rainforest and Waorani territory from oil extraction. Nenquimo’s leadership and the lawsuit set a legal precedent for indigenous rights in Ecuador, and other tribes are following in her footsteps to protect additional tracts of rainforest from oil extraction. Guardians of the Amazon Rainforest

Background from the publisher:

"Born into the Waorani tribe of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest—one of the last to be contacted by missionaries in the 1950s—Nemonte Nenquimo had a singular upbringing.

"She was taught about plant medicines, foraging, oral storytelling, and shamanism by her elders. At age fourteen, she left the forest for the first time to study with an evangelical missionary group in the city.

"Eventually, her ancestors began appearing in her dreams, pleading with her to return and embrace her own culture. She listened.

"Two decades later, Nemonte has emerged as one of the most forceful voices in #ClimateChange activism. She has spearheaded the alliance of indigenous nations across the Upper Amazon and led her people to a landmark victory against #BigOil, protecting over a half million acres of primary #rainforest. Her message is as sharp as a spear—honed by her experiences battling #loggers, #miners, #OilCompanies and #missionaries.

"In We Will Be Jaguars, she partners with her husband, Mitch Anderson, founder of #AmazonFrontlines, digging into generations of oral history, uprooting centuries of conquest, hacking away at racist notions of #IndigenousPeoples, and ultimately revealing a life story as rich, harsh, and vital as the Amazon rainforest herself."

https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/09/we-will-be-jaguars-nemonte-nenquimo.html

#SaveTheForests #SaveTheRainforests #Activism #Memoirs

To understand our reality, I invite you to watch 'Our Children's River', a short documentary film produced by my community in collaboration with #CeiboAlliance, #AmazonFrontlines and #HonnoldFoundation.

Across the #Amazon, Indigenous guards are unarmed patrols that peacefully defend ancestral territories against threats like #oil, #mining and #poaching. We use diverse technologies to monitor our lands, and when necessary, force out illegal operations and actors.

2/6

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-21/solar-powered-surveillance-technologies-help-protect-the-amazon?utm_source=Amazon+Frontlines&utm_campaign=8292fb74e9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_Our_Childrens_River&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_df6926ddb5-8292fb74e9-194032584

"Peru’s discriminatory legal system only recognizes property rights on territories that comply with a colonial understanding of agriculture and grazing. Land can only be property if it fulfills a capitalist logic of extraction.

Currently, less than two-fifths of Siekopai territory in Peru is recognised as property of Siekopai communities. The communities are demanding a full recognition of the territory as property. "

https://amazonfrontlines.org/chronicles/two-visions-of-land-one-protected-by-a-dirty-law/

#amazon #landback #indigenous #amazonfrontlines

« El Mapa es Poder »
– by Alex Yule, on the Mapbox blog

https://blog.mapbox.com/el-mapa-es-poder-830a875fcc5b

#Ecuador #Waorani #AmazonFrontlines #DigitalDemocracy #IndigenousRights