Throughout history, colonialism has taken many forms. First, it manifested in religious missionaries then rubber companies, and, finally, in oil companies. Today, under the guise of their so-called green agendas, environmental NGOs continue the oppressive legacy of their predecessors. In this case, the aim of their self-proclaimed green capital is to appropriate our ancestral territories in order to sell carbon credits. In this scheme, the commodification of the Amazon’s forests has become a new attempt to divide Indigenous organizations. Faced with this new threat, one viable solution is to bet on the self-determination of the communitarian society of the Sumak Kawsay.
This all began all with the arrival of mercenaries from Europe. These were colonial occupation troops, armed with the sword and the cross. In waves, conquistadores invaded our ancestral territories, occupied our communities and subjugated our rights. The historical forces of colonialism, which appeared 531 years ago, continue to destroy and pillage Sumak Kawsay villages to this day.
During this time, we have experienced different waves of colonizers; the missionaries, the shiringueros, oil workers, miners and loggers. They brought with them epidemics and pandemics like smallpox, measles, yellow fever, dysentery and, in most recent years, Covid-19 that decimated our people. Today, environmental conservationism is the new colonial wave that presents itself as the panacea of ecological marketing but that commodifies our ancestral territories.
Indigenous Shuar-Achuar people greeting the missionary Father Mattana in 1894. Photo: Anonymous
Indigenous Shuar-Achuar people greeting the missionary Father Mattana in 1894. Photo: Anonymous
The missions and rubber plantations
The missions were just one of the facets of imperial colonialism and forced on us, the concept of a single, all powerful God. The missionaries came to our lands around 1600 and remain here, still. Their mission was to remove our conscience, the yuyay. They colonized our minds and emptied our thoughts of life. They outlawed our religion and spirituality. They tried to upend our world view and to erase our history. For them we were not ayllu, that is, we were not a community or a people. We had no culture or rights. They classified us as being soulless creatures, infidel barbarians.
With their ‘divine vision,’ they occupied our territories, controlled the life of our communities and tried to destroy our knowledge of our territories. In the same way, they disrupted our relationships of coexistence with all the beings of our forests and waters and disrupted the life systems of our Sumak Kawsay culture. They imposed a devastating colonial disorder that led to the political, social, cultural and economic submission of our communities for generations. They disrupted our forms of self-government, supplanting our ancestral authority with authorities who were at the service of the missionary’s interests. They exercised their power in the most violently ways.
The extraction and trade of rubber established a perverse slave system, based on the imposition of unpayable debts and an exchange of labor for life. The colonial traces of the rubber plantations are present, to this day, in our generational memory.
The extraction and trade of rubber established a perverse slave system, based on the imposition of unpayable debts and an exchange of labor for life.
As a colonial force, shiringueros, as we refer to the rubber companies, took over the forests and rivers of the Amazon between 1789 and 1945. The Amazonian rubber boom coincided with the First World War and the development of tires for the automotive industry. Their exploitation occurred on a massive scale and to such an extent that it endangered the very survival of Indigenous People. Our ancestors were subjected to crimes against humanity and the practice of exterminating all life in the Amazon was firmly established.
Rubber extractivism only intensified racism, sociocultural discrimination, and economic exploitation against Indigenous communities. Moreover, it altered the ancestral practices of the community-based structure of the Sumak Kawsay economy. The extraction and trade of rubber established a perverse slave system, based on the imposition of unpayable debts and an exchange of labor for life. The colonial traces of the rubber plantations are present, to this day, in our generational memory.
Roger Casement with Indigenous People on the border between Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. The Irish diplomat denounced the atrocities of the rubber industry in Africa and the Amazon. Photo: Author unknown
Roger Casement with Indigenous People on the border between Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. The Irish diplomat denounced the atrocities of the rubber industry in Africa and the Amazon. Photo: Author unknown
The colonial face of the oil empire and environmental conservation
After European conquest and the arrival of the rubber companies, the occupation of our ancestral territories by transnational oil companies is the largest colonial invasion in contemporary history. The devastating effects of oil extraction destabilize community structures that sustain the Sumak Kawsay way of life in its entirety. The result has been social exclusion, discrimination, racism, poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction, delinquency, family violence and prostitution. In addition, these impacts are intergenerational, since they have violated our rights for decades.
After the feast of oil, came the feast of carbon. In the maelstrom of the environmental market, Indigenous Peoples have become merely a carbon footprint or, in the best cases, we represent a gram of CO2, negotiable to the highest bidder. The new colonial wave of environmental conservationism is a green avalanche that slides, catastrophically, over the territories of Amazonian Indigenous Peoples. In this case, colonial corporations camouflage their imperial ambitions behind an ecological facade while they move to turn our ancestral territories into a stage for the commercial dance of green and blue capital and carbon credits.
Their objective is to indoctrinate communities with a suffocating conservationist and environmental fundamentalism, which works to supplant and distort the essence of the Sumak Kawsay ancestral knowledge.
In their bid to entrench their colonial meddling, conservation organizations engage in far-reaching environmental media and marketing campaigns aimed at Indigenous Peoples.
The spread of environmental conservationism is part of the colonial strategy of large extractive corporations that pollute the planet and that seek to snatch the territorial rights of Indigenous Peoples so they might continue to plundering all life. International conservation NGOs, operators of carbon credits and green capital, financed by large corporations, are in charge of implementing the colonial conservation agenda on the territories where we live and maintain the most important forested regions on the planet, thanks to our culture and ancestral knowledge and our vision of life that is the Sumak Kawsai way.
In their bid to entrench their colonial meddling, conservation organizations engage in far- reaching environmental media and marketing campaigns aimed at Indigenous Peoples. Their objective is to indoctrinate communities with a suffocating conservationist and environmental fundamentalism, which works to supplant and distort the essence of the Sumak Kawsay ancestral knowledge that governs the communal life of our peoples.
Oil spill on the banks of the Coca River in the province of Sucumbíos. Photo: Telma Iraburu
Oil spill on the banks of the Coca River in the province of Sucumbíos. Photo: Telma Iraburu
Convervationism that seeks to affirm its own eco-capitalist agenda
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, conservation NGOs have become monopolies that implement carbon credit programs and control REDD+ projects (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), wholly in line with the fiscal policies of green capital. Their aim is to develop environmental agendas whose central objective is to convert Indigenous territories into markets for environmental services and establish businesses financed by carbon-linked capital.
REDD+ projects is an international mechanism created by the UN to mitigate climate change and reduce CO2 emissions, CO2 being one of the main Greenhouse Gases (GHG). Carbon Credits provide income to finance the development of REDD+ Projects. In the province of Pastaza more than 10 conservation NGOs comprise the so-called Technical Table for Environmental Management of the Pastaza Provincial Sustainable Development Ecological Area (AEDSPP). Without consulting surrounding communities, they exert their eco-capitalist agendas on Indigenous Peoples and offer the communities patronage projects for supposed environmental mitigation.
If this new legal figure is approved, approximately 5,000,000 hectares of the 11 Indigenous nations of the Ecuadorian Amazon would become protected areas.
If this new legal figure is approved, approximately 5,000,000 hectares of the 11 Indigenous nations of the Ecuadorian Amazon would become protected areas.
To implement their colonial agenda, these NGOs conceived of a project that, by decree establishes the Inherent Principles of the “Living Forest – Kawsac Sacha” and its native peoples. Without having consultated with Indigenous nations and people, this project states that “the principles of the Kawsak Sacha apply in all the geographical locations in Ecuador wherever there are jungles, forests, hills, mountains, caves and other geological formations, or natural hydrological resources belonging to the commons (rivers, waterfalls, lagoons, water sources, etc.), fragile ecosystems in general and other elements of natural and cultural heritage.”
The project proposes that the Kawsak Sacha regime will enable “the protection of the existing natural and cultural heritage in Indigenous lands and territories, through a new legal construct of conservation which originates in the worldview of the original peoples. The implication of the construct being that the Living Forest or Kawsak Sacha is considered a subject with rights, endowed with life”. If this new legal figure is approved, approximately 5,000,000 hectares of the 11 Indigenous nations of the Ecuadorian Amazon would become protected areas and would be under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Environment, Water and Ecological Transition, and the Ministry of Culture and Heritage.
Indigenous communities have not been consulted on the proposed “Selva Viviente” project. Photo: Kawksacha
Indigenous communities have not been consulted on the proposed “Selva Viviente” project. Photo: Kawksacha
The interference of conservationism in our territories
In the case of the Kichwa Nation of Pastaza, the coalition of conservation NGOs has been pressuring the organizations to convert 1,400,000 hectares of ancestral territory into a protected area under the conservation management regime called “Kawsac Sacha.” This interference is strirring controversy among the communities and, in particular, the Kichwa Kawsac Sacha people who denounced the arbitrary use of their identity and demanded the immediate suspension of the draft decree that violates their land rights.
History repeats itself. The protected areas that currently exist in the Ecuadorian Amazon, such as Yasuní National Park and the Cuyabeno Fauna Production Reserve, were arbitrarily created by the State, violating the territorial rights of the Waorani, Siekopai and Kichwa nations. These territories were the scene of serious conflicts that put the lives of the people in these communities at risk.
The scenario becomes more complex and confrontational with the occupation of Indigenous territories by colonial oil, mining, and forestry extraction companies.
The scenario becomes more complex and confrontational with the occupation of Indigenous territories by colonial oil, mining, and forestry extraction companies.
For the Indigenous Peoples of Ecuador, the proliferation of projects declaring protected areas promoted by environmental organizations is worrying. This includes the expansion of biosphere reserves, the expansion of the buffer zones of the Yasuní Park, the establishment of biological corridors, biocultural reserves or other intangible areas. These NGO proposals happen without consultation and threaten the integrity of the territorial rights of Indigenous nations.
The scenario becomes more complex and confrontational with the occupation of Indigenous territories by colonial oil, mining, and forestry extraction companies. Worse still, these extractive industries seek to control forest ecosystems, watersheds, biodiversity, and the natural landscapes of community territories by force.
The Yasuni National Park is home to a unique biodiversity in the world. Photo: SNAP
The Yasuni National Park is home to a unique biodiversity in the world. Photo: SNAP
Decolonizing our territories to resist this new wave of colonialism
Conservation NGOs intensify their colonial interference with a clear strategy to dismantle and demobilize the processes of the development and full exercise of land rights, as well as the autonomy and self-determination of Indigenous Peoples. Its overall purpose is to control Indigenous territories of the Amazon basin and transform them into large markets for carbon and environmental services. In order to ensure the advance of their objectives and green businesses, they intend to control local and regional organizations by co-opting their leaders and financing micro-projects for assistance and patronage.
The deep crisis and division that the most important Indigenous organizations are experiencing throughout the Amazon basin, is clear evidence of this outside meddling. It is with deep concern that we bear witness, through our collective memory, the aggressive interference of colonial transnational companies that continue to invade our territories, transgress our customs and plunder our rights with their imperial arrogance.
In order to face this new double-faceted colonial conservation and extractive wave, it is imperative to decolonize our territories and forward an agenda of autonomy and self- determination. This agenda must be created from within the heart of our communities and villages and according to our own political vision of Sumak Kawsay. We must make possible and effect the sovereignty of our territories in full exercise of our rights, rights that were won through the historical resistance of our peoples.
