FOR MILLENNIA, the Indigenous peoples of the western Amazon have been living in balance with the rainforest and the beings and spirits that inhabit it. We have always defended our cultures and territories. First, from the arrival of the conquerors, and now from the threat of oil companies.
Traditionally, men have assumed leadership and led us in the defense of our territories. However, that began to change in 2016. That year, the Ecuadorian government granted licenses to oil companies to explore and drill on newly delineated oil blocks within our ancestral territories. At that time, the government of then president Rafael Correa was using his platform to discredit Indigenous organizations in the country, such as CONAIE (the national Indigenous organization of Ecuador) and CONFENIAE (the Amazonian Indigenous organization of Ecuador). In response, a group of women met and planted the first seeds of what became the Women Defenders of the Amazon Against Extraction (Mujeres Amazónicas).
Even under a government that had banned marches and stigmatized our Indigenous organizations, we organized a march of Amazonian women for International Women’s Day. We did this without fully knowing what we were facing: cold, illness, and the mockery of the government. But we did it. Approximately two hundred women and children of all ages arrived in Quito on March 21, 2016. That was the moment when
