In the late 1990s, the Kichwa community of Sani Isla, in northern Ecuador’s Amazon region, learned that the oil company Occidental (Oxy) had plans to conduct exploration on their communal territory. Orlando Gualinga, one of the community’s leaders, had been working for the company for several years. “Boss, in an extreme case where seismic studies or drilling take place, could our people work?” Gualinga recalls asking a manager. “He told me no, that only technologists or university graduates could.” At that moment, Gualinga remembered how his parents and previous generations had worked for large landowners. Now, while they wouldn’t be working on an estate, they would lose the autonomy they had fought to gain. “In the end, we were going to return to the past,” he reflected. Sani Isla was established in the 1960s by Kichwa settlers who, after leaving the estates of wealthy landowners, sought fertile lands where they could live in freedom. A handful of families arrived in an area that would later become known as the provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana, located between what is now the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve and Yasuní National Park. Life at that time, Gualinga recalls, was very harsh. Movement was along the Napo River in dugout canoes propelled by poles, without motors. Within the community, the work was hard, and there were still few inhabitants. But the territory they named Sani — after a tree abundant in the area, known for its purple dye — was finally their own. Amazon rainforest lodge…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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