indigenous witnesses
in Forest Law
169 168 along ecological lines – contemporary art and climate crisis josé gualinga, nina pacari and domingo ankwash
witness (chapter five) witness (chapter five)
In 2003 we managed to expel the oil company. But the Ecuadorian judiciary continued to threaten, defame and persecute our leaders and people to the point that leaders received death threats. That’s why we appealed to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.
The living forest is the forest of beings. The forest is where the micro- and macro-organisms interconnect with us, with our people and families. It’s also a space of recreation, where we enjoy ourselves, where we replenish the energies for our emotional and physical life. It’s a space for transmitting our knowledge through the Yachaks (the wise ones) and the elders to our children;
it’s an area of education. And it’s also where we enter into communion with other beings who transmit their energies to us so we can continue to live. That’s the living forest. It was important throughout the process to make the Court of Justice understand how enmeshed the people of Sarayaku are with the mountains, the lagoons, the trees; with the Amasanga, the Sacharuna, the Yashingu; and with all the natural spaces that include invisible beings, the protectors regulating the ecosystem. These beings have more fundamental rights than any of us because they are the ones who protect. We wanted the court to understand the importance of the territory of Sarayaku, and to understand that if the territory disappears, the indigenous people disappear with it.
nina pacari
From a Western logic you can conceive of a natural contract. For the cosmovisión of the indigenous people, this isn’t necessary because in holistic thinking, by violating the individual rights of a person you violate the rights of nature. Oil ex-ploitation is an example. But in the debates, the environmentalists said it was important that nature be defined as a subject with rights. So we said, let’s meet in the middle. Thus the outcome is a norm with intercultural character, a new concept that can be a paradigm for the conservation of nature. In the case of Ecuador, with the new constitution and the reforms that have been pushed ahead since the nineties, we say that a person or individual is a subject with rights;
people or collective identities like First Nations are subjects with rights; and nature too is a subject with rights.
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Ursula Biemann, video still from Forest Law – José Gualinga.
2-channel video installation, 38 mins (2014).
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Ursula Biemann, video still from Forest Law – Nina Pacari.
2-channel video installation, 38 mins (2014).
171 170 along ecological lines – contemporary art and climate crisis josé gualinga, nina pacari and domingo ankwash
witness (chapter five) witness (chapter five)
domingo ankwash
I am Shuar. Our history derives from a history of invasion of the indigenous people in Latin America. Our territory was vast; it reached from the north to the south of Amazonia. Now it is divided into provinces: Zamora, Morona Santiago, Pastaza, Napos, Sucumbius, Orellana. All this was our territory. Seven nationalities lived there, each with its distinct culture and language, and when the republics were formed, they divided us into two countries: Peru and Ecuador. In Peru we have our Shuar brothers who speak our language. The republics have divided us.
Our territory has been degraded; we don’t have a territory anymore. Mining and oil extraction come together. In the war of ’41 (between Ecuador and Peru) the transnational corporations entered, Shell and Texaco. They came to work in the north, and here in the mines in the south, too. There is a story that says that in this zone the miners were exterminated by the Shuar, so they went to exploit oil in the north instead. This history of oil exploitation is bitter for us. And now in the mining boom, this government, which is extractivist in the truest sense, calls in the transnational corporations. We know for sure that the Chinese, Canadians, Arabs, Koreans and Japanese are here. What do they negotiate? Our Amazonian territory. They negotiate our forest, our habitat.
All large-scale mining destroys the habitat of humans, plants, forests, animals, insects, and the entire biodiversity. What will happen when the mines start to open? For large-scale mining, they will need territory and water. They will have to tap rivers and valleys, and start to destroy and contaminate. That’s why we are fighting. They are already in the Cordillera del Cóndor, they have already started their activity. Now they will start to open, beginning with the excavations of 1,000 metres or more, 3,000 metres wide. That’s just the first pit they will open. What will they do in twenty, thirty, or forty years? That’s what we ask ourselves.
I said, ‘Let’s move and organise ourselves.’ We are not armed, but one day the stones will fly because we cannot die for dying’s sake, we are living beings.
Extinguish us – I prefer that they extinguish us, that no single Shuar remains, and that they do as they please with our territory. But as long as there is a living Shuar, they will get these reactions. And now they are afraid of our little fishing rifle, while they have machine guns, helicopters, bulletproof vests, military helmets, etc. I have the right to defend my people. I have the right to speak for my people, who are mute. If they have to shoot us down for telling the truth, shoot us down; we are not afraid. The Shuar invented poison and the lance. And now they tell us to cut the point of the lance, they are afraid of the lance itself. How far do these powerful capitalists reach? My people say that we are the enemies of the govern-ment. The state declared war on the Shuar people.
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Ursula Biemann, video still from Forest Law – Domingo Ankwash.
2-channel video installation, 38 mins (2014).