12:00, 09 August 2021
Words by Smiley Team, Staff Writer, London
On International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, good news has come in from Peru, where indigenous people are celebrating a long-awaited campaign victory.
Since 1993, local groups have lobbied the Peruvian government to create a reserve to protect the lands of uncontacted members of the country’s Kakataibo tribe. Nearly three decades later and after thousands of emails to Peruvian ministers, the government has agreed to create a reserve of almost 150,000 hectares in the central Peruvian Amazon.
By setting aside the land for the use of indigenous people, the Kakataibo Indigenous Reserve will save lives and protect the forest from extractive industries such as logging and gold mining.
Welcoming the decision, Survival International’s Peru campaigner Teresa Mayo said: “This is a major victory for the indigenous movement in Peru and their supporters worldwide. The Kakataibo territory had already been cut in half by a highway, and there’s been increasing invasion and destruction of their rainforest.”
Peru’s Amazon indigenous organisation AIDESEP first called for the creation of a reserve for the Kakataibo people in 1993. Since then organisations have joined the campaign, including local indigenous groups FENACOKA, ORPIO and ORAU, together with Survival International’s supporters from around the world.
Leading up to the campaign’s victory, Survival supporters sent nearly 7,000 emails to Peruvian ministers. The eventual decision followed a government move just three months earlier, to create another uncontacted reserve, known as Yavari-Tapiche, in the North East of the country.
These reserves are crucial for protecting Peru’s indigenous people from extinction. The country is home to more uncontacted tribes than anywhere else in the world other than Brazil.
Although uncontacted tribes in Peru have come into contact with the outside world throughout history, their relative isolation makes them more vulnerable to diseases to which most outsiders have built up an immunity. On top of this they are increasingly threatened by attacks from loggers.
Knowing how vulnerable the Kakataibo tribe is, Teresa urged: “Now the government must properly protect the reserve, and remove outsiders from the territory. Creating the reserve is only the first official step - its borders must be properly enforced, and logging concessions inside the area must be cancelled.”
To support indigenous people’s right to self-determination worldwide on International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, donate to Survival International here.
