SARAYAKU, Ecuador—Indigenous leaders from Brazil traveled down Ecuador’s Bobonaza River seeking guidance from Sarayaku, the Kichwa community that forced an oil company out of its territory in the early 2000s and helped establish a landmark precedent for Indigenous rights.
The visitors, Guisel Marworno and Wagner Karipuna, represent the Galibi Marworno and Karipuna peoples. Their territories face pressure from Petrobras’ offshore exploration near Brazil’s coast. The prospect of an oil boom is already changing Oiapoque, while Indigenous lands in the region are also threatened by pollution and climate change.
Across the Amazon basin, governments have imposed oil and gas concessions over roughly 31 million hectares of Indigenous territories—an area comparable to Poland. Communities often confront companies with far greater legal and financial resources, while trying to protect their lands and preserve their social structures.
Sarayaku’s experience offers a different model. After Ecuador granted an Argentine oil company permission to explore its territory in 1996, the community organized resistance. In 2002, the company entered with military support. Sarayaku blocked operations where possible, mounted an international campaign and rejected efforts to divide its people. The resistance was met with violence, and court documents say four leaders were allegedly tortured.
The company withdrew in 2003, but left explosives buried across the forest. After Ecuador’s courts failed to resolve the dispute, Sarayaku brought its case to the Inter-American human rights system. In 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that Ecuador had violated the community’s rights by permitting exploration without consultation. The decision ordered reparations and the removal of the explosives.
The ruling became a major precedent for Indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consultation on projects affecting their territories. It also recognized the distinctive relationship between Indigenous communities and their lands.
Patricia Gualinga, one of Sarayaku’s best-known defenders, told the visiting leaders that the struggle had not been about rejecting development. “We were not rejecting development,” she said. “We were defending our way of life.” The community continues to seek recognition of its forest as a living being and rights-holder, a request it took to the Inter-American Court in August as part of the ongoing case.
Sarayaku’s approach also rests on its Kawsak Sacha, or “Living Forest,” declaration. Proposed by José Gualinga in 2004 after years of studying ancestral teachings, the declaration describes the territory as a living and intelligent system rather than a collection of resources for human use.
That worldview helped inspire recognition of the rights of nature in Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution. Later cases, including a decision protecting the Los Cedros cloud forest from mining impacts, further developed the principle.
For José Gualinga, Kawsak Sacha encompasses the entire territory, including its rivers, forests and invisible beings. Sarayaku’s relationship with nature also guides hunting, fishing and harvesting. The community monitors wildlife and can impose moratoriums when populations decline.
The community’s concept of development differs from the model associated with roads, oil and mining. Sarayaku seeks improvements in water systems, communications and health care without destroying the forest. Its minga system, based on collective work, brings residents together every two months to maintain trails and strengthen communal ties.
The Brazilian visitors described similar systems in their own communities. Their territories are understood not simply as physical spaces but as living places inhabited by beings with whom people must maintain reciprocal relationships. Their economies include sustainable açaí harvesting, tourism and fishing, activities that support food security and community autonomy while protecting nature.
Their lawyer, Rodrigo Leitão, argued that these existing economies are overlooked when governments promote drilling in the name of development. An oil spill, he said, could erase generations of work. The Galibi Marworno, Karipuna, Palikur-Arukwayene and Galibi Kali’na peoples filed a lawsuit in Brazil in 2025 challenging the government’s drilling plans.
Sarayaku’s leaders acknowledge the personal cost of resistance, including fear, illness and trauma. They also say that the forest and communal life help restore people’s strength. Their message to communities facing extraction is that alternative societies and economies already exist—and that defending them can reshape the law as well as the future of the forest.
Sources: Inside Climate News.