Grants in South America

|

TinkasTawna

$5,000 to support a 10-day storytelling/filmmaking workshop for women and youth in the community of San José de Piatua, a Kichwa community in the Ecuadorian Amazon engaged in a successful anti-mining struggle. The workshop is run by TinkasTawna, an Indigenous-run communications school based in Ecuador that seeks to not only train Indigenous youth in audiovisual communications, but also to establish the infrastructure in communities for the ongoing production of Indigenous-made audiovisual content to help amplify their own visions and solutions.

|

Pueblo Shuar Arutam

$5,000 to support relaunching Pueblo Shuar Arutam’s School of Communications, including securing equipment and holding a series of 6 2-day workshops to be held at each of the PSHA community associations across almost 600,000 acres of Shuar territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon with participation from at least 1 representative of all 47 communities and with youth participation prioritized as well. This has been a long-term goal of PSHA to enhance their capacity for reporting, documenting and overall communications work as the Shuar continue their efforts to protect their traditional territory from a number of threats, including the controversial San Carlos-Panantza open-pit copper mine.

|

Asociación de Mujeres Sapara del Ecuador ‘Ashinwaka’

$5,000 to support 3 Sapara communities in establishing traditional medicinal garden plots and sharing knowledge regarding use of medicinal plants, with a special focus on the techniques that have been used in the prevention and treatment of Covid-19. Training participants and teachers from each of the communities’ education centers will continue the process of sharing this knowledge and maintenance of the medicinal gardens together with local youth as part of overall programs supporting Sapara health, rights and protection of traditional territories.

|

Nación Sapara del Ecuador (NASE)

$5,000 to support installing solar and shortwave radio communications systems in 2 Sapara communities in their territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon covering an area of over 500,000 acres of intact roadless rainforest that has been defended from being opened up to oil development. The first phase of the project was initiated in 2020 to help address the Covid crisis and territorial defense initiatives and was initially supported by partner NGOs – in this phase the Sapara are now taking the radio program into their own hands and expanding it to additional communities supported by their own trained technicians.

|

Amazon Emergency Fund / Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB)

$50,000 to support efforts led by Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB) to support emergency Covid-19 response for Indigenous communities and organizations as a new Covid strain is spreading rapidly across Amazonas state in the Brazilian Amazon. Funds will go towards urgent and immediate prevention and care; food and medical supplies (including oxygen concentrators going to remote communities); emergency communications and evacuation; protection and security for Forest Guardians; and food sovereignty and community resilience.

|

Roots & Routes IC

$5,000 to support a unique audio-visual collaboration between ancestral communities in the western Coastal Chocó rainforest and the Amazon, including trainings for youth in documentary storytelling and production of a 50 minute documentary about the Indigenous Awá community of Guádualito and the Afro-descendant community of La Chiquita that live in and around the last remaining stands of the tropical Chocó rainforest along the Ecuadorian-Colombian border and together filed the world’s first Rights of Nature lawsuit in response to impacts from palm oil plantations.

|

Federación de Comunas Unidas de la Nacionalidad Kichwa de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana (FCUNAE)

$8,000 to support Kichwa Indigenous communities affected by the largest oil spill in more than a decade in the Ecuadorian Amazon as they fight for justice. This grant supported two gatherings that were a critical part of FCUNAE’s consultation and trainings for the Kichwa communities they represent and support, including a general assembly with representation from all 70 villages and a series of trainings for youth towards cultivating future leadership.

|

CONCONAWEP Federacion Waorani, Comunidad Kofán de Sinangoe, Resguardo Indígena Siona de Buenavista, and Instituto Internacional de Derecho y Sociedad-IIDS

$27,500 to support the launch of a global campaign to raise visibility and resources for Indigenous women across the Amazon fighting threats to their peoples’ lands, from oil extraction to mining, illegal logging and agriculture. This new Women Defenders initiative is being launched by Waorani leader Nemonte Nenquimo together with several other Indigenous women leaders that have won major legal victories in their ongoing struggles to defend their traditional territories in the Amazon. The timing of the launch will strategically leverage the platform provided by several prestigious awards in recognition of Nenquimo’s leadership in securing an historic legal victory that shut down Oil Block 22 and protected half-a-million acres of Waorani ancestral rainforest territory.

|

Asociación de Raíces Indígenas Amazónicas Peruanas (ARIAP)

$5,000 to support the Axenon Ikanwe Radio Program, produced by and for Shipibo-Konibo people both as a strategy for maintaining and strengthening a sense of community that is critical in generating greater levels of activism which have been key for protecting their lands in the Peruvian Amazon from deforestation for the expansion of palm oil plantations and recent oil drilling, as well as to contribute to language and cultural revitalization programs through the nearly exclusive use of the Shipibo-Konibo language during the daily broadcasts (the language is labeled as “Definitely Endangered” by UNESCO due to the emergence of a Spanish-hybrid that is increasingly spoken by people under 50).