Pueblo Sarayaku

The Kichwa native people of Sarayaku are from Ecuador. As a social movement, its aim is to restore a healthy environment, without pollution, a productive land with plenty of natural resources that ensure food sovereignty. Sarayaku seeks to know and practice ancestral knowledge, to keep traditional practices and to strengthen their identity as indigenous people.

They perform advocacy, campaigns, training, community organization, monitoring, documentation and public awareness activities around the assertion of collective territorial rights, strengthening of education, sustainable development projects and territorial management plans.

Sarayaku asserted in 1992 the right to territory and to have collective titles of land ownership for indigenous peoples and nationalities in Ecuador. This led to the acknowledgement of indigenous peoples’ rights on the 1998 Constitutional Reform in Ecuador. Sarayaku also obtained a landmark decision from the Inter American Court of Human Rights against the Ecuadorian State for violation of the right to free, prior and informed consent.