Award of Excellence: Piatsaw: The Resistance of the Indigenous Nations of Ecuadorian Amazon
Piatsaw: The Resistance of the Indigenous Nations of Ecuadorian Amazon
Piatsaw: The Resistance of the Indigenous Nations of Ecuadorian Amazon
PIATSAW documents the resistance of the Indigenous nations of the Ecuadorian Amazon protecting their ancestral territories from extractivism. For decades, Ecuador’s rainforest has been devastated by some of the worst environmental disasters in the Amazon due to oil spills and industrial malpractice. Legal and illegal mining has left lunar landscapes steeped with mercury and toxic waste. Extractive impunity is currently endangering one of the most biodiverse regions in the world through the poisoning of land and water, irreversibly killing the forest and its people from within. Furthermore, non-consensed government concessions to foreign companies, which spoil communities from their territories, are ravaging the way of life of Amazonian peoples, leaving them also vulnerable to violent criminal organizations exploiting the forest.
Ecuador’s Indigenous struggle over the governance of their rightful lands has won unprecedented legal battles against extractive concessions. These include a 25-year successful class-action against oil giant Chevron-Texaco for negligent disposal of over 17 million gallons of oil waste; the Shuar’s legal restitution of lands in Nankints after being attacked, forcibly evicted and legally harassed by a government complicit with Chinese copper mining corporations; and the Waorani’s recent nationwide referendum halting Petroecuador from oil drilling in Block 43 at the Yasuní National Park. By protecting their home territories and biocultural heritage with a variety of tactics, Indigenous nations of Ecuador, like the Kichwa, Kófan, Shuar, Waorani and Sápara, are deterring global warming and safeguarding the Amazon rainforest.
PIATSAW comprises seven years (2015-2023) of long stays living with Amazonian communities. My aim is to continue documenting the Ecuadorian Indigenous environmental resistance model that is already being reproduced by other nations in the Americas. The Sápara ancestors say that a powerful spirit called Piatsaw imagined the world into existence; solutions to the climate crisis are challenging us to imagine and feel the rainforest like they do. PIATSAW is a tribute to the unfaltering commitment that the Amazonian peoples of Ecuador have displayed as defenders of their ancestral territories in the rainforest; it is also a testimony of the abuses that they have so painfully endured; but mostly, its an insight on the environmental and cultural extinction threatening Ecuador’s Amazon.
Piatsaw: The Resistance of the Indigenous Nations of Ecuadorian Amazon
PIATSAW documents the resistance of the Indigenous nations of the Ecuadorian Amazon protecting their ancestral territories from extractivism. For decades, Ecuador’s rainforest has been devastated by some of the worst environmental disasters in the Amazon due to oil spills and industrial malpractice. Legal and illegal mining has left lunar landscapes steeped with mercury and toxic waste. Extractive impunity is currently endangering one of the most biodiverse regions in the world through the poisoning of land and water, irreversibly killing the forest and its people from within. Furthermore, non-consensed government concessions to foreign companies, which spoil communities from their territories, are ravaging the way of life of Amazonian peoples, leaving them also vulnerable to violent criminal organizations exploiting the forest.
Ecuador’s Indigenous struggle over the governance of their rightful lands has won unprecedented legal battles against extractive concessions. These include a 25-year successful class-action against oil giant Chevron-Texaco for negligent disposal of over 17 million gallons of oil waste; the Shuar’s legal restitution of lands in Nankints after being attacked, forcibly evicted and legally harassed by a government complicit with Chinese copper mining corporations; and the Waorani’s recent nationwide referendum halting Petroecuador from oil drilling in Block 43 at the Yasuní National Park. By protecting their home territories and biocultural heritage with a variety of tactics, Indigenous nations of Ecuador, like the Kichwa, Kófan, Shuar, Waorani and Sápara, are deterring global warming and safeguarding the Amazon rainforest.
PIATSAW comprises seven years (2015-2023) of long stays living with Amazonian communities. My aim is to continue documenting the Ecuadorian Indigenous environmental resistance model that is already being reproduced by other nations in the Americas. The Sápara ancestors say that a powerful spirit called Piatsaw imagined the world into existence; solutions to the climate crisis are challenging us to imagine and feel the rainforest like they do. PIATSAW is a tribute to the unfaltering commitment that the Amazonian peoples of Ecuador have displayed as defenders of their ancestral territories in the rainforest; it is also a testimony of the abuses that they have so painfully endured; but mostly, its an insight on the environmental and cultural extinction threatening Ecuador’s Amazon.
