Grants in South America

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Confederacion de Nacionalidades Indigenas de la Amazonia Ecuatoriana (CONFENIAE)

$2,500 to support an Amazonian Women’s Congress and March for International Women’s Day. These activities provided an opportunity to refine strategies for protection of Indigenous territories and to prioritize sustainable alternatives to meet local needs in alignment with the vision of Indigenous women leaders who are steadfast in their demands for no industrial extraction within their communities’ traditional territories.

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Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag (DECOIN)

$2,500 to support a mobilization to Ecuador’s capital city of Quito by communities impacted by large-scale mines. This mobilization sought to revoke illegally granted concessions with primary participation coming from the Intag area in the northwest of the country which is home to a biologically diverse and unique cloud forest ecosystem. Intag communities have stopped two previous attempts by multinational mining companies to develop a major open-pit copper mine and are currently fighting to do so again.

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Pueblo Originario Kichwa de Sarayaku

$1,500 to support in coordination with Amazon Watch a delegation of Indigenous youth and leaders from the Kichwa territory of Sarayaku from the Ecuadorian Amazon to participate in the United Nations Framework Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties 23rd convening (COP23) in Bonn, Germany to advocate for the protection of their ancestral territories and keeping oil in the ground in the Amazon.

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Associação Sociocultural Yawanawa (ASCY)

$4,000 to support strengthening efforts to monitor and patrol traditional Yawanawa territory covering nearly 500,000 acres of largely intact rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon, including training new members to expand the patrol team that to date has successfully stopped logging and other industrial activities.

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Fundación TIAM

$5,000 to support legal defense, advocacy, and organizing related to efforts to stop a planned copper mega-mine on the lands of the Shuar Indigenous people in the southern Ecuadorian Amazon that has been approved by the government without seeking the consent of – let alone properly consulting with – the Shuar, despite the fact that international and Ecuadorian law require such consultation.

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Associação das Comunidades Montanha e Mangabal

$2,000 to support efforts to auto-demarcate the traditional territorial boundary of the of Montanha-Mangabal communities along the Tapajós River in the Brazilian Amazon as a strategy to identify areas of illegal invasion, render visible the territorial limits to illicit loggers and miners and support overall monitoring and protection efforts, including efforts to stop the construction of the Jatobá dam, one of a series of 43 hydroelectric dams planned in the Tapajós River Basin.

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Resguardo Indígena Siona de Buenavista

$5,000 to support Siona Indigenous communities in Ecuador and Colombia that are working to secure recognition to over 120,000 acres of ancestral rainforest territory and to stop the placing of 8 seismic testing lines for oil exploration. This grant will specifically support the purchase and installation of solar energy and VHF radio communications systems that are badly needed for basic communications, energy and security in a region that is increasingly dangerous for Indigenous leaders.

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TierrActiva Colombia

$2,000 to support a youth network climate justice gathering in Colombia to provide an opportunity to learn practical tools and skills and develop regional strategies for concrete actions, including efforts to increase the visibility of community-led resistance to extractive industries in the Andean and Amazonian regions.

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Pueblo Originario Kichwa de Sarayaku (Tayjasaruta)

$5,000 to support a delegation of Indigenous youth, women and leaders from the Kichwa territory of Sarayaku from the Ecuadorian Amazon to participate in the United Nations Framework Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties 21st convening (COP21) in Paris, France to advocate for the protection of their ancestral territories and keeping oil in the ground in the Amazon.