After winning a historic lawsuit, an Indigenous community in Ecuador has finally obtained legal ownership of its land in a protected area — 80 years since being forcibly displaced. According to experts, this new ruling may change the approach communities use to obtain their ancestral lands in Ecuador, and the country may see more communities filing similar lawsuits to obtain lands locked away for state conservation. Ecuador now recognizes the 42,360-hectare (104,674-acre) ancestral Pë’këya territory in the northeast of the Ecuadorian Amazon, which is also home to some of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, as under the legal ownership of the Indigenous Siekopai nation. The decision by the provincial court of Sucumbíos means that the Siekopai people now have legal rights to the place where their ancestors are buried. It also means the community is free to sustainably manage the local natural resources as it sees fit. “This does not imply that the ministry of environment should not monitor deforestation or river pollution in our territory,” Justino Piaguaje, a Siekopai leader, told Mongabay. “Obviously, the ministry has that responsibility. But above all, we exercise control over our territory.” Jorge Acero, a human rights defender and Amazon Frontlines lawyer who represented the Siekopai in court, told Mongabay that the rules of use for a protected area have always been established by the Ministry of Environment and Water. But now, for the first time, the ministry will have to respect the decision-making capacity of a community to self-determine its own…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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