Hope to both sides: Straddling cultural ancestry and tradition with modernity
Location
Ecuador
Released
August 2015
Duration
10:44
Tags
Culture
Ecuador
Fighting Big Corporations
Participatory-made film
Peru
Resource Extraction
youth
The Secoya, or Siekopai people, known as the People of Many Colors, have lived for countless generations along the rivers and streams of the Amazon Rainforest, along the border of Ecuador and Peru. Hernan Payaguaje, a young Secoya leader, learned to fish in these rivers from his grandfather Delfin, who recalls a time when the rivers where crystal clear and teeming with fish. Today, oil operations and large-scale agriculture upriver have affected the Secoya peoples’ rivers and the fish they rely on. Hernan straddles two sides of modern indigenous life in the Amazon: he has a college education and has spent time in the city, but he is also connected to his ancestral culture and the teachings of his grandfather. He hopes to bring both sides together, his education and his identity, to understand what contaminants are affecting the rivers in order to protect his people and their ancient way of life.
The community of Morete Cocha is located in the region of Pastaza Province in the Amazon region of Ecuador. Like many other communities Morete Cocha is under threat by interest of oil companies seeking to exploit crude in the communities land. This is the story of community’s search for environmental and cultural preservation. The phrase […]
Emergildo Criollo (Kofan nation) was just a child when the oil company Texaco arrived by helicopter in his peoples’ ancestral territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The ensuing decades of oil extraction and deliberate contamination dramatically altered the landscape of the region, impacting the Kofan people’s culture and resulting in a public health crisis. Emergildo fought […]
Nemonte Nenquimo is a young Waorani woman leader whose grandfather, Piyemo, was a legendary Waorani warrior who lived and hunted in what is today known as Yasuni National park. Now, Nemonte is returning to her grandfather’s homeland—a land transformed by oil companies and contamination—to bring clean water to the Waorani communities living in a dire […]
The Kofan community of Sinangoe is situated in the pristine, and highly biodiverse headwaters of the Aguarico River in Ecuador, an important tributary of the Amazon River. The community has organized a land patrol, and are using mapping technology, camera traps, drones and legal strategies to defend their ancestral territory from a gold-mining boom that […]
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ActivismEcuadorFighting Big Corporations
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