Last Updated on January 1, 2026
We, the Peoples, the original nationalities of the Amazon Region: Ziobain people of the chagra, water, and yagé, Awá mountain people, A’i Cofán true people, Siekopai multicolored people, Kichwa Rukullakta and Quijos – descendants of Jumandi, Waorani children of the sun and the jaguar spirit – walkers of the jungle, Pakkiru Pastaza Kikin Kichwa Runakuna, Shuar sons and daughters of Arutam, Kakataibo children of the forests, Kukamas river people, Murui Bue, Shipibo-Konibo-Shetebo, declare:
Our history has been marked by resistance to systematic violations of human and collective rights: such as the rubber boom, Catholic and evangelical evangelization, agrarian reforms, the forced imposition of other ways of life, the oil, mining, and timber booms, drug trafficking and organized crime, and the new waves of green colonization, which can be summarized as massacre and destruction.
This dispossession has been accompanied by the militarization of our territories in order to attack our own actions of protection and territorial defense, while in neighboring territories, organized crime groups linked to drug trafficking and illegal mining advance with impunity and impose their systems of pressure and control. Our lives at the family and community level are under constant and increasing risk due to diverse and escalating forms of violence manifested through territorial disputes, kidnappings, violations of physical, cultural, and sexual integrity, as well as the forced recruitment of young men and women, intimidation and threats by organized crime and armed groups in order to sell and consume drugs. This is especially true in border and trans-boundary territories where this violence is exacerbated and the state is structurally absent.
Currently, not only do they destroy our territories but they also imprison our bodies, make us disappear, murder us, criminalize us, and stigmatize us with legal constructs and with the political weight of authoritarian, racist, and anti-rights regimes. Those of us who defend the territories are the ones who top the statistics of victims of murders and attacks in the region, and we are also the ones who most frequently face unjustified legal proceedings as a form of the obstruction or intimidation of our work.
Given this regional context of violence, the Indigenous Guards of Native Peoples of the Amazon region, together with the brotherhood and solidarity of the Indigenous Guards that make up the Unuma Network of the Orinoquia Region and the Indigenous Guard of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), and with the support and accompaniment of organizations for the defense of the human rights of Indigenous Peoples, Alianza Ceibo and Amazon Frontlines, met from December 1st to 5th, 2025, in the A’i Cofán Ancestral Community of Sinangoe, within the framework of exercising self-determination and self-governance, obeying our mandate of “saying by doing.” This space allowed us to recognize and gather experiences of common forms of violence, to share strategies for defending our territories, and to reaffirm the bonds of unity and the collective mandates that emerged previously in various spaces in each of our regions.
We reiterate that our Indigenous Guards legitimately transcend through the mandate of our elders as a millennia-old and collective strategy of resistance, constituted by virtue of our own law, supported by the universal framework for the protection of human and collective rights, and by constitutional norms. Those of us who make up the Indigenous Guards are: children, adolescents, young people, men, women, grandfathers, grandmothers, communities, Peoples, and nationalities who have the mandate to care for and to protect knowledge, culture, and territory.
The spirits of the yajé, the Yoko, the tobacco, the coca, the jaguar, the anaconda, the eagle, the ceiba tree, the river, and the jungle (the bais), sustain our spirit and guide us in this ancestral mission of the indigenous guard. Our principle is to defend the word of origin, nature, and wisdom. A task that we perform with strength and pride.
We recognize in body and spirit the struggle for which we prepare: our Wituk, Achiote, the dye on our bodies protecting us and reminding us of the dignity of our connection to the land; our spears, macana, staffs of power, the wakapa, bow and arrows, our crowns, the weavings, the word, the songs, the dances, are and will continue to be our way of surviving and resisting in our continuous and sacred territories.
Our symbols are not adornments, they are root, memory, and path; they are the voices that unite us in the face of a world which advances without listening, ignoring and despising our ways of life; and from our collective voice we say: defending the territory is defending the life of everyone.
As Indigenous guards of the jungle, the forests, and the rivers, among our activities are: we travel through our territories to care for, watch over, monitor, and defend them from threats through strategies of community protection and care based on spiritual protection and the mandate of the highest authority; we participate in our own educational processes to ensure the transmission of knowledge to future generations; and we contribute to the creation of our own economies for the sustainability of our communities.
In this struggle and path, the Indigenous guards, and the technical teams of human rights defenders who accompany us, have been the target of stigmatization, targeting, political persecution, and criminalization both by governments of the day and by powerful groups, as happened in Ecuador during the 2025 national strike, when a smear campaign was developed leading to criminal investigations for diverse crimes which are ongoing.
This attempt to discredit our identity and work as a collective subject of rights by trying to align us with terrorism or drug trafficking, creates a serious scenario of physical and cultural risk. It reflects the structural racism of the state, which seeks to standardize our ways of life and has perpetuated and supported systematic violations of our rights as Indigenous Peoples; but it also reflects the fear in colonial institutions towards our forms of governance and autonomy, especially in those territories where the governments in power have economic interests linked to extractivism and territorial dispossession.
Through our labor, and following the community mandates, the Indigenous Guards reject and act against all actors who, taking advantage of the structural absence of states, economic impoverishment, and the dismantling of the rule of law, threaten and persecute us in order to impose their presence and actions.
Based on the above, and in accordance with our community mandates – the highest authority that constitutes our own law, and within the legal and constitutional framework for the protection of the human and collective rights of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities, we resolve:
We demand:
guarantee the security and integrity of our territories and communities in the face of the growing risk we face from violence such as territorial disputes, kidnappings, rapes, organized crime, threats from illegal armed groups, and forced recruitment.
We are Guards, we are memory, we are collective action.
Our labor is transparent, public, and collective.
Our labor defends life and territory, here we are and here we will remain!
Across the world right now, Indigenous peoples are facing a renewed assault on their lands, rights, and ways of life.
From extractive industries pushing deeper into ancestral territories, to governments rolling back hard-won protections,
the threat is global—and it is growing.
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