Indigenous Rights Defenders
“You can’t learn to hunt from a book. You have to go out into the forest with your father or your grandfather and learn by observing, learn by doing. For our leaders to learn the laws, they have to do the same.”
Mauricio, Kofan elder.
The Situation
The Waorani, Secoya, Siona and Kofan, without recourse to first-hand legal knowledge and in the absence of viable legal representation, have seen detrimental environmental violations go unchecked, illegal settlements on ancestral lands proliferate, negotiations with the government result in superficial or illusory concessions, and indigenous representatives sign misleading and exploitative industry contracts without free, prior, and informed consent.
The Vision
We are creating spaces for leaders and youth from these indigenous nations to construct together a shared understanding of the threats facing their communities, the causes of these threats, and to build collective knowledge around how to create legal and advocacy strategies that directly address the unique challenges faced by each community. Our legal team then accompanies the Indigenous Rights Defenders and their communities in actions to defend and to recover their ancestral rainforest territories.
