#WEARELAND
Help our Kichwa community secure a future, with no land we are a lost people.
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Our home is parcelled into privatized land, this makes it more vulnerable for us to lose land and for buyers like miners and big oil to take our home and exploit our land. 5 acres of land, means uniting our community, creating a safe space, creating hope for a future.
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This is an initiave born from the land itself. We gurantee 100% of donations directly fund protecting forests and strengthening Indigenous communities.
Have questions? Contact us.
We Only Have
One Home
Indigenous Kichwa communities along the Napo river in the Ecuadorian Amazon, like ours, are currently under threat of extinction.
Ongoing pressures from agriculture, deforestation and open pit and illegal mining are fragmenting our ancestral lands and polluting the water sources that we depend on for both spiritual and physical nourishment. While tenuous land purchase agreements - which often move forward without community consent - are forcing Indigenous peoples to live on increasingly small parcels of land, encroachment from nearby cities are also increasing land, culture, and language loss. All of these events combined are disrupting local communities' way of life - which is intrinsically linked to the land that we live on - and causing forest resources to become depleted.
Without action to protect kichwa communities and our lands - our way of life, cultures and languages will likely become extinct.
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Furthermore, in the absence of the role that indigenous communities play in protecting our homes and territories, the thousands of acres of primary rainforest that we currently live alongside will become vulnerable to further exploitation. Based on the extensive damage that has already been done by those encroaching along the Napo river, it is clear that this constitutes a major threat to one of the most biodiverse regions on earth.
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Image depicts the devastation on the Anzu River in Yutzupino, a river that feeds. into the Napo River and has contaminated water sources for Kichwa communities who live on the banks of this river and depend on its health.
90%
The proportion of water samples analysed from the Napo river which indicate toxicity as a result of heavy metal pollution.
x200
The increase in number of hectares covered by mining activity in the napo province over the past two decades (1996 - 2020).
70%
The proportion of Ecuador's protected areas which are located within napo province.Source.
Kichwa youth have begun the #Allpamanchi movement 'We are Land' or 'Somos Tierra' in spanish. A movement taking action for a chance for a viable and thriving future.
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With the support and guidance of our elders, Eli Virkina, kichwa land rights advocate, along with her cousin Klever Vargas are using storytelling to lead a movement to address the challenges currently facing our community, through piloting a model for collective land ownership that can ensure the formal protection of ancestral lands, whilst creating new employment opportunities for those living along the Napo river.
Through the process of securing collective land ownership we intend to create a safe shared space in which we can gather, organize, share experiences and host community visits.
In doing so, we hope to preserve and share our culture, create stability within our community, and provide neighbouring communities with a tried and tested model for protecting our lands, cultures and livelihoods from the threats that we currently face.
We extend our gratitude towards these organizations who have made initial contributions to supporting youth leading this initiative.
IYARINA
