We are Napu Runa, People of the Napo River
We are Napu Runa, more commonly known as the Kichwa People of the Amazon Rainforest. Our community of Venecia Derecha is located on the southern banks of the Upper Napo River with approximately 200 people. Our home is revered as one of the most biodiverse places on earth, truthfully so as it's where the foothils of the Andes meets and the headwat Although we have faced many layers of change, we remember and honor ourselves. Our story is embedded in the land, a story of joy, loss, and resistance. In the generation of our great grandparents, land was stolen. In the generation of our grandparents land was commercialized and parcelled off as blocks for oil.
Today in our generation we are facing all kinds of threats to our lives and our land. When we were kids our land was violated without Free, Prior, and Informed Consent.
LAND IS ALIVE, just as we are alive. is not to be owned or sold but rather lived in mutual respect and relations with. Unfortunately our way of has not been respected and we have been forced to co-exist in a society that commodities and puts a monetary price on land.
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FREE PRIOR AND INFORMED CONSENT, there has been none of it in our history of relations with the Ecuadorian government. We are the first generation within our community to rise and fight for the protection of land and demand reparations in our local forest home.
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Allpamanchi, Somos Tierra, We are Land
Ayllu, our social unit, and relation to land. Haciendas, during this era of Patrones and Peones our families were enslaved to white settlers.
When it officially became illegal to own slaves under the Ecuadorian Governments our Great-grandparents, grandparents and parents were freed.
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Shortly after Ecuador declared the Amazon region as free land to claim. Inidgenous peoples in the amazon were not notified of this and so we were late to the game that we were not invited to. Our granparends quickly moved to try and claim land but only those who somewhat understood the Spanish laguage were able to claim land. 50 acres was then give to 1 of brothers of who we decended from. Our relationships extended throughout the Napo River which runs through two entire countries, even if the 50 acres were given to each of the 8 brothers it is no where near to our ancestral territory and relation to land. Today these 50 acres gone through 3 generational splits and the privatization of land has made each peace extremely vulnerable. The ecudorian ovenment has been successful in reducing the value of land to numbers and our relationships with land to closed borders.
We cannot live sustaibly anymore, this is the reality for the majority of indigenous communites on the Napo. Although our home is expremely vulnerable, we maintian our relation to is. It is a proven fact that biodiveristy is higher within Inidgenous land stewardship. Our goal is to unite our community once again and and register our land as offcially protected area.
Our Future
We are fighting to protect our land. We dream of a future where our voices and ideas as Indigenous Peoples are valued, our joy is celebrated, and our rights people+nature are respected.
This is our last change to fight Learn more on how you can help Here.
Hacienda system in the upper napo, Ecuadorian Amazon 1910-1940
Hacienda system in the upper napo, Ecuadorian Amazon 1910-1940
Further Reading
Read section 4.1 for details of our story (Three other Inidgenous groups are mentioned but this article refers to us as semi-nomadic farmers and fails to recognize us as the Amazonian Kichwa people)