Our Resistance
Our struggle dates back to the 1600s, when the missionaries arrived. At that time, there were between 30,000 and 40,000 Siekopai living in a vast territory of 7 million acres. The missionaries brought illnesses such as flu and measles, which extinguished 90% of our population. Very few Siekopai survived, hiding in the depths of the jungle, but were forced out when the rubber tappers arrived.
Today, there are only 1600 Siekopai remaining, living between Ecuador and Peru. The 700 of us in Ecuador live in a fragment of rainforest, far from our ancestral territory.
We feel very threatened, very worried because our territory is very small and we are surrounded by oil exploitation and monoculture palm oil plantations. Our rivers are contaminated by toxic waste from the palm oil industry.
The construction of roads is another threat. The state oil company wants to build an access road within our territory to reach oil wells deep in the jungle, but we have refused. The expanding road network makes it easier for people from outside to invade our land for logging and hunting. This affects our community life and the biodiversity of the forest. We have almost no resources, almost no fish or animals to hunt. Lack of food sovereignty is a big worry.
Our ancestral knowledge is being rapidly lost. Oral traditions that have been passed down for millennia are disappearing. Our young people are leaving for the cities and our shamans are dying without apprentices.
In the face of these existential threats, the community of Siekoya Remolino has declared itself in resistance. We have pledged to peacefully defend our 17,000 hectares of rainforest and are committed to conserving the biodiversity of our territory and our ancestral culture.
We are in the process of weaving a tapestry of resistance with many threads. We are working to improve our food sovereignty, to transform the education in our community, to diversify our sustainable sources of income, and to preserve the knowledge and traditions of our ancestors. See our Life Projects for more information.
We are also engaged in a legal battle to recuperate our ancestral territory of Pë’këya (Lagartococha), the spiritual centre of the Siekopai. Pë’këya is a black lagoon environment that we believe is the gateway to the aquatic world. Historically, the great Siekopai shamans from all corners of our territory gathered at the lagoons in Kakotëkawë (August) to perform yajé ceremonies, accompanied by other indigenous peoples.
In the 1940s, when Pë’këya was ravaged by the war between Ecuador and Peru, our people there had to abandon their territory. When the area was divided by the militarisation of the border, some Siekopai communities and families did not see each other for half a century, until the signing of the 1998 peace treaty allowed reunification.
Following the war, the Ecuadorian State declared Pë’këya a reserve and signed it over the Kichwas. We are awaiting a resolution from the provincial court over the adjudication of our ancestral territory. Our hopes of surviving as Siekopai rest on returning to Pë’këya.
During our 400 years of resistance, we have suffered much injustice, displacement, slavery, and marginalisation, but we have never lost our roots. We have never stopped fighting for freedom, for dignity and, most importantly, for our territories. We keep demanding the right to live once again in the territory of our ancestors, so that we can reconnect with the Great Spirit.
