National Council of Rubber Tappers
$5,008 in general support for Chico Mendes’ Sustainable Rainforest Campaign and its effort to create and gain legal recognition for a 1.7 million-acre reserve on the Tapajos River in the state of Para.
Grants in South America
Amazon Defense Front
$4,500 to fund workshops, coordinated by Shuar and Achuar communities, aimed at strengthening the communities’ capacity to respond effectively to impending oil threats to their territories in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Amazon Defense Front
$3,300 to strengthen a campaign against Texaco, including supporting grassroots organizing around a groundbreaking lawsuit against the company and monitoring and enforcing its commitments to clean-up the hundreds of open toxic waste pits and polluted rivers caused by its operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
OPIP
$6,500 to support efforts to challenge ARCO’s planned oil exploration on Quichua territory in Pastaza in the Ecuadorian Amazon through community organizing, workshops and non-violent direct actions.
Centro de Investigación de los Bosques Tropicales
$7,000 grant to demarcate the southern boundary of Los Cedros Biological Reserve created as a buffer zone for the Cotocachi-Cayapas National Park in Ecuador, protecting it from colonization, poaching, and illegal logging.
Chief Paiakan (fiscally sponsored by Green Sphere Inc.)
$5,007 in legal support for Kayapo Chief Paulinho Paiakan to help defend him against politically motivated harassment due to his involvement in environmental and Indigenous rights activism in Brazil.
Aukiñ Wallmapu Ngulam
$1,920 to support an Alternative Assembly of Indigenous Peoples from Latin America to participate in the 1998 Summit of the Americas in Chile in order to voice their concerns about how Indigenous peoples‰ŰŞ rights and livelihoods are affected by the processes of economic integration in Latin America.
Bolivar State Indigenous Federation (FIEB)
$7,000 to support FIEB’s efforts to stop the construction of the Guri transmission line through the Imataca Forest Reserve and Canaima National Park in Venezuela by raising public awareness, media work and legal action.
SAIIC
$600 in support for Joaquim Yawanawa of the Yawanawa of Brazil during his two month internship in the Bay Area to receive training in alternative media and policy development to assist his efforts in focusing international attention on human rights as they apply to Indigenous peoples.
Organization of the Yawanawa Extractivist Reserve of Rio Gregorio
$7,500 grant to support a Yawanawa community in the Rio Gregorio region of Northwestern Brazil’s sustainable cultivation of urucum and the small-scale marketing of the plant in the local region to help the community achieve greater economic self-sufficient and independence.