Much has been written about the Shuar, an Indigenous group from the Ecuadorian Amazon; many words have been used to describe them. Warriors, head-shrinkers, and shamans are some of the most common associations. But one word that is not typically seen in reference to the Shuar? Poet. Until now, that is—especially if María Clara Sharupi Jua has anything to say about it.

On March 8, 2012 in El Pangui, a small town in the southeastern Amazon region of Ecuador, a group of one thousand Indigenous people began a 400 mile journey north toward the capital of Quito.

March 8, 2012 – International Woman’s Day – marked the beginning of the two-week march for “Water, Life, and Dignity of Indigenous Peoples” in Ecuador.

On March 8, 2012 several hundred Indigenous people began a two week march across Ecuador to call attention to their protest of a large-scale open-pit copper mine.

By Dr. Skye Stephenson

The Indigenous Peoples of Ecuador, who comprise fourteen nationalities and eighteen pueblos, have been at the forefront of many key human rights struggles in recent decades that have had an impact far beyond their own nation. A key goal of their united Indigenous movement has been the establishment of an intercultural university.  After many years of development, the Universidad Intercultural Amawtay Wasi “the House of Wisdom” (UIAW) was launched five years ago receiving accreditation for its unique education offerings based upon Andean ancestral knowledge.  Now, the Ecuadorian government is threatening to withdraw that accreditation and potentially close down the university.

The territory of the Achuar, the people of the swamp palm, is a vast and remote territory straddling the long-disputed border of Peru and Ecuador, spanning nearly three million acres of forest.

In 2003, Global Response launched a campaign to protect the Sarayaku people from oil companies CGC of Argentina and Chevron-Texaco

An Ecuadoran court has order Chevron to pay almost $10 billion to Indigenous plaintiffs who, the court found, have been damaged by decades of contamination from oil operations there. The oil operations, originally conducted by Texaco, which merged with Chevon in 2001, included some egregious behavior, leaving oil sludge in open pits and rivers, conducting almost no remediation, and contaminating huge areas of rainforest.

The recovery and protection of sacred sites is at the heart of cultural survival among Indigenous populations in the Andes. That effort comes into sharp relief when those sites are directly threatened. Such was the case in July, 2010, in northern Ecuador’s Imbabura province, when plans to broaden the Pan-American Highway to six lanes endangered a sacred spring known as San Juan Pukyu in the community of Ilumán Bajo.

The Ecuadorian government is investigating Marlon Santi (president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, or CONIAE) for alleged sabotage and terrorism in connection with his participation in a protest against government exclusion of Indigenous representatives from a high-level, international meeting about Indigenous issues.

My name is Anank Nunink Nunkai and I am a man of the jungle in Ecuador. The name of my culture is Shuar, and our culture has existed for thousands of years in the middle of the jungle. We have the custom of making a spear for the really young children because the spear would be a friend of the child and his defense. If it’s a young girl, we make her a basket. This is also a defense for her and for the house. Deep in the jungle there is a lot of danger, so the parents teach the children how to defend themselves against any kind of incident that may occur.

While the rest of the country was celebrating Barack Obama’s electoral victory in November, incumbent Massachusetts congressman James McGovern was on a plane bound for one of the most remote places on the planet: Ecuador’s northern Amaz

The Zápara people live in the Amazon jungle on the border between Peru and Ecuador in the area currently known as Pastaza, bordering on territories of Kichwa, Huaorani, and Achuar peoples. The Zápara were once one of the most important and populous peoples in the area, with 28 ethno-linguistic groups divided into 217 tribes and a population of 98,500 spread across a vast territory. They are now one of the smallest, with no more than 500 people.

Indigenous peoples don’t only suffer from the effects of climate change; in some cases they suffer from the solutions to climate change.

With a population estimated at 40 to 50 million and with 400 identified ethnic and linguistic groups, indigenous peoples represent approximately 10 percent of Latin America’s population. Although their demography varies from state to state (in Bolivia and Guatemala indigenous people constitute the vast majority of the population, while in Venezuela and Brazil they represent approximately 1 percent of the total population), indigenous peoples throughout the region share a common experience: social and economic discrimination.

Roberto Cachimuel is one of the founding members of Yarina, a family of musicians from Otavalo, Ecuador, that has received wide acclaim in their home country and abroad.

The Struggle for Indigenous Rights in Latin America is a collection of seven separate country case studies and is the result of a 2003 conference at Cochabamba that discussed the diversity of indigenous struggles throughout the

Notwithstanding the many programs that have been implemented throughout Latin America to reform the administration of justice, in most countries judicial systems cannot yet guarantee that the rights of indigenous peoples are respected. In addition, there continue to be tensions between national justice systems and indigenous conflict-resolution methods.

One new institution that has been widely adopted throughout the region, the office of the Human Rights Ombudsman, is helping to improve this situation.