Indigenous inhabitants of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest are known as the Achuar. In order to protect their ancestral lands and culture, many Achuar still live in the rainforest and work with Pachamama Alliance.
The Achuar are an Amazonian Indigenous people whose ancestral lands span nearly 2 million acres and the present-day borders of Ecuador and Peru.
Many of the Achuar people who reside in the Amazon rainforest still conduct their daily lives in accordance with the customs and traditions that were passed down from generation to generation. One such custom involves regular practices and rituals related to dreams.
Early in the 20th century, the Ecuadorian government first provided oil concessions in the Amazon rainforest. When the investigation and development of this region accelerated in the 1960s, more access was granted. Similar histories were shared in the area by the lumber, rubber, and industrial agriculture industries.
Some of the Achuar shamans and elders in the rainforest had visions of a serious and impending threat to their people and culture by the 1980s. They realized that this threat had roots far beyond their rainforest home as industries moved steadily closer and closer to their ancestral lands.
These wise men and shamans understood that the globalization of a worldview and culture based on mass consumerism and exploitation has resulted in an intricate structure of social, political, and economic forces that are driving the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
