Grants in South America

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Fundación Alianza Ceibo in collaboration with Cabildo Siona de Buenavista

$12,500 to support a Siona community in the Colombian Amazon to defend their rights and fortify their community land patrols to defend their territory against illegal incursions by extractive interests and armed actors. Supported activities include: ongoing activities by the Indigenous Guard program, including land patrols and training for young rangers; skill and information sharing gatherings between Siona and other community land patrols across the region; accompaniment and support for Siona leadership in the community of Buenavista; legal strategies to defend Siona rights and lands, including advancing a pending case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR); and land titling efforts to secure over 7,000 acres of ancestral territory.

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Amazon Frontlines in collaboration with Fundación Alianza Ceibo and Siekopai Nation

$12,500 to support a concerted push towards securing land title for three key communities in Peru—an area over 250,000 acres of rainforest—through this process the Siekopai can realize a bi-national biological, social, and cultural corridor for their people of over 1.4 million acres and knock down barriers to land titling for dozens of other Indigenous nations across the country, as well as eliminate the Permanent Production Forest designation over their lands.

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Organización Waorani de Pastaza (OWAP)

$25,000 to support strengthening core organizational capacity of Organización Waorani de Pastaza as well as using the Waorani’s legal precedent against the Ecuadorian government’s proposed auction of their ancestral territory to the international oil industry to defend 7 million additional acres of rainforest threatened by oil auction. The project is supporting efforts to: strengthen leadership capacity through training and hands on project management; expand relationships with stakeholder communities through planning and visioning assemblies; strengthen Indigenous rights to FPIC by securing a ruling on their case before Ecuador’s Constitutional Court; support Waorani women-led food sovereignty initiatives in 10 communities; implement the second year of intercultural education projects across 12 Waorani communities; and to finalize territorial demarcation efforts and scaling land patrolling to prevent an uptick in illegal logging and mining.

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Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana (CONFENIAE) and Mujeres Amazónicas (Women Defenders of the Amazon)

$10,000 to support both CONFENIAE and Mujeres Amazónicas for several Indigenous women-led events and mobilizations organized around International Women’s Day. Funds supported the Amazonian Women’s Congress bringing together 500 women leaders from the 11 Indigenous Nations in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the launch event for the Casa de Mujeres Amazónicas, a new community center serving as a safe space for women to retreat, connect, train, and receive support.

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Associação Xavante Warã

$5,000 to support Xavante communities impacted by agribusiness and proposed major transportation routes that would cut through their territory in the Cerrado, a tropical savanna ecoregion of Brazil, to fortify their cultural revitalization and community health initiatives. This women and youth led project is supporting community gardens in 4 communities on the Sangradouro Xavante territory, including expansion of the gardens, collection of seeds in partnership with community gardens on neighboring Xavante territories, teaching traditional practices to youth including making baskets to store the seeds and crops, and creation of a bilingual texts documenting traditional practices prepared by the project team in collaboration with Elders.

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Asociación de Guardia Kichwa Yuturi Warmi

$9,000 to support an Indigenous delegation from the Kichwa community of Serena in the Ecuadorian Amazon to participate in the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, as part of a larger delegation being organized by the Black and Indigenous Liberation Movement, including leading sessions at the Minga Indígena and at the alternative World Summit of Indigenous Peoples.

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Fundacion Alianza Ceibo

$20,000 to support production of a series of radio episodes that will be aired across the major Amazonian Indigenous radio stations in Ecuador that will shed light on the context and community-led processes that have resulted in several landmark legal wins advancing the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) and territorial defense in Ecuador. The project is being done in collaboration with an Indigenous communications team, including youth, that are receiving training in running and producing radio shows to be able to continue producing Indigenous-run radio programs.

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CONCONAWEP Federacion Waorani

$40,000 to support using the Waorani’s legal precedent against the Ecuadorian government’s proposed auction of their ancestral territory to the international oil industry to defend 7 million additional acres of rainforest threatened by oil auction. The project is also supporting efforts to: strengthen women’s leadership through capacity building and real-world experience in implementation of projects in support of their communities and development of women-led microenterprises; implement alternative education pilot projects across 12 Waorani communities; carry out territorial demarcation and patrolling; and build alliances with Indigenous Nations of the southern Ecuadorian Amazon and Indigenous organizations.

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Organizacion Nacional de los Pueblos Indigenas de la Amazoni Colombiana (OPIAC)

$5,000 to support COICA (The Coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin) and OPIAC (the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon) co-hosting the first annual Women’s Summit in Colombia with 130 Indigenous women participants from across the Amazon basin and including panels, workshops and other exchanges sharing experiences focused on topics such as women’s livelihoods, community activism and territorial defense, women’s rights, Covid-19, climate impacts on the Amazon, and community resilience.