Narcisa Mashiento, Belen Paez, Robin Fink, Carolyn BuckLuce

By Milagros Egas Villacres, human rights graduate student at Columbia University

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“The land we inhabit is the land where our spirits live and we want future generations to have enough resources, clean land, and a better life standards in order to stay on the land that has always been our home.”- Narcisa Mashiento

On October 15, the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Program at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights hosted an event with the Fundación Pachamama from Ecuador that is part of the Pachamama Alliance. The event featured talks by Belén Páez, President of Fundación Pachamama; Carolyn Buck-Luce, co-founder of Imaginal Labs and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University; and Narcisa Mashiento and Robin Fink, Program Directors of the Jungle Mamas program.  Speakers presented the work they do in order to protect the cultural and biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest.  Some of these efforts include: changing the Ecuadorian Constitution to recognize environmental rights, working with the government to change measures of societal success; and working with indigenous leaders to modify millennia-old traditions in order to promote maternal and community health.

Jungle Mamas started as a result of the high mortality rate among mothers and newborns in isolated Indigenous Communities in Ecuador. Traditionally, birth took place “with nature” while the woman was alone in the jungle. If complications arose, however, mothers were alone and communities did not have the skills to respond to emergencies. In response, Jungle Mamas trains Achuar women and men on how to have: safe births, healthy mothers and children, and necessary prenatal and postnatal care. While respecting the traditional knowledge and practices of indigenous communities, Jungle Mamas has improved the health of families and communities as well as the environment where these communities reside. Narcisa Mashiento explained that the women of these communities were the driving force of Jungle Mamas. It is hard for her and her peers to get any assistance in an emergency, as clinics tend to be closer to towns than to Indigenous land. Narcisa said that her community sees western practices as a tool to save lives in a health crisis and not as a negative presence.

Founded 17 years ago, Fundación Pachamama is dedicated to working to “create an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, human presence on our planet.” After fifteen years of work, Fundación Pachamama has achieved successes for Indigenous Peoples’ rights and their cultural, social, and economic development. However, each speaker stressed that this is an ongoing struggle which has profound effects, not just in Ecuador, but globally. Fundación Pachamama works with the Achuar community on various projects that seek to ensure economic viability while enabling Indigenous Peoples to protect the land they inhabit, such as Ecotourism and Clean Energy projects. Belén Páez explained that oil exploitation has not brought any kind of development to the communities inhabiting the affected areas. In most cases, companies simply contaminate the land and water without contributing to the economic success or sustainability of the communities they affect. The most recent case is the Ecuadorian Government’s project to exploit one of the most diverse areas in the Amazon, the Yasuní Park. In this case, Fundación Pachamama together with the Indigenous Communities, have a strong position against the project and demand that the state protect and respect the right of Indigenous peoples to prior consultation, which is required by international law in order to seek prior and informed consent from Indigenous Peoples before commencing any development project on indigenous lands.

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Milagros Egas Villacrés is an Ecuadorian MA candidate in the Columbia University Human Rights Studies program, concentrating in Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Her main interests are Indigenous Peoples located in the Andean region, their relationship with land, and the right to self-determination.

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