- A 2023 court ruling granted land rights in Ecuador’s Cuyabeno Reserve to the Siekopai people, recognizing their ancestral ties and setting a precedent for Indigenous land claims in protected areas.
- The decision has sparked controversy, as it affects the Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha, another Indigenous people with ties to the same land and a government agreement.
- The case has raised broader concerns about inter-Indigenous conflict, the role of NGOs and the limits of state agreements in resolving overlapping land claims.
- Many Indigenous leaders argue that land titling is essential but warn that current legal approaches risk intensifying disputes rather than promoting shared stewardship.
This is Part 3 of a four-part series on Indigenous land rights in Ecuador. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 4.
A landmark land title in an Amazon protected area, which sets a potential precedent for Indigenous rights in Ecuador, is proving to be complex and controversial.
In a November 2023 ruling, three provincial court judges decided in favor of the Siekopai, an Indigenous community that argued they should be given rights to part of their historical homeland, which they call Pë’këya, inside the current boundaries of the Cuyabeno Reserve, located in the northeast of Ecuador. Rights advocates celebrated the decision, as it could open the door to the recognition of other Indigenous claims to land in protected areas.
But ordering the return of 42,360 hectares (104,674 acres) to the Siekopai means the Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha community, who are also Indigenous, will lose control of part of the land that Ecuador’s environment ministry had recognized in a 2008 agreement, known as a convenio de uso y manejo.
Now, even as the government has yet to comply with the judges’ decision amid a tense standoff between the Zancudo Cocha and the Siekopai, Indigenous leaders are brooding over the precedent the case may have set. It has surfaced concerns about the roles of the state and NGOs in arbitrating land conflicts between Indigenous peoples, especially in the Amazon, with its history of dispossession, shared land and overlapping claims.
Observers also note the limitations of convenios to protect Indigenous land rights.
A complex case
Enrique Moya Tangoy, the leader of the Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha community, says he’s indignant at the ruling. He says he believes the community’s agreement regarding Lagartococha, another name for the land in question, to be legally airtight because of their ancestral ties. Moya points to a signed 2007 dialogue in which the Zancudo Cocha and a community of A’i Cofán, another Indigenous people in the region, gave the Siekopai some land in Lagartococha. He saw the result of that dialogue as a final agreement over land before they entered into the convenio with the ministry for the remaining territory.
But in 2022, the Siekopai filed a lawsuit against the environment ministry for failing to guarantee their ancestral rights to the land for decades since this conflict began. They did not bring the case against the Zancudo Cocha, who were officially a third party in the case.
According to Byron Real, a lawyer providing legal support to the Zancudo Cocha, legal help and resources from Indigenous rights NGO Amazon Frontlines “were important for the Siekopai to win the case.” The Zancudo Cocha had far less support, but Real also says the environment ministry’s defense of its existing agreements with the Zancudo Cocha and other Indigenous communities was ineffective.
In contrast, Mitch Anderson, the co-founder and executive director of Amazon Frontlines, says the case is “a watershed moment” for Indigenous peoples and that the decision upholds both international law and Ecuador’s constitutional commitments.
The ruling is the result of the government’s establishment of protected areas “without the consent of the Siekopai and without any prior analysis of the ancestral connections of Indigenous peoples to these areas, leaving Indigenous peoples to navigate conflicts the government itself helped create,” Anderson says in a written statement.
He says the A’i Cofán and the Siona, another Indigenous people, as well as the Siekopai and the Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha, now have the opportunity to secure lasting land titles in the region by employing “bottom-up conservation strategies that advance everyone’s land rights in the Amazon.”
Many agree that land titles are important mechanisms for Indigenous peoples. But the way in which the court case resulted in the legal loss of ancestral land for one Indigenous community has caused concern in Indigenous communities beyond the Zancudo Cocha.
A’i Cofán leaders worry that other people with ancestral ties to the region could try to take some of it through the courts, says Felipe Borman, an A’i Cofán leader of the Zabalo community just north of Lagarto cocha. For example, the vast majority of ancestral A’i Cofán lands are under agreements with the ministry, say leaders, which has allowed them to manage huge swaths of territory and prevent incursions by the oil company Petroecuador.
It’s unclear whether this case gives Indigenous people a better claim to a title if they were the earliest people present on a piece of land, and some observers cast doubt on whether it could set a precedent.
But a statement by Indigenous A’i Cofán and Siona organizations highlights Borman’s concern that their lands could be taken from them. It notes that the ruling could also mean the A’i Cofán and Siona could take many Siekopai and Zancudo Cocha lands — including a large part of Lagartococha — since they say they passed through the region earliest.
Justino Piaguaje, leader of the Siekopai Nation, sees it differently, noting that the ruling helps strengthen “legal security” for their land and offers an opportunity for others to do the same.
He says the 2007 dialogue between Siekopai, A’i Cofán and Zancudo Cocha leaders ignored the internal decision-making of the Siekopai Nation and that their assembly later rejected the agreement.
Still, Piaguaje adds, “It is not a matter of annulling previous agreements, but of guaranteeing that those who wish to access the ownership of their territories have a clear legal route to do so. Each people is free to decide how best to protect their territory and culture.”
Nivaldo Yiyoguaje, president of the A’i Cofán organization NOA’IKE, acknowledges the importance of land titling for communities. But he adds, “It shouldn’t be done in this way by taking lands another Indigenous people already use, where there’s already a conflict … or where there are signed agreements with the Ministry of Environment, as it causes conflicts between Indigenous brothers.”
According to Angus Lyall, a geographer at the University of San Francisco, Quito, the case is likely to increase conflict and competition between Indigenous communities over who can better defend their ancestral and spiritual claim to contested lands. He advocates for mediation through the Indigenous national organization CONAIE instead of bringing conflicts into the legal realm where there is no space for negotiation.
“It’s just a logic of win and lose. And those who have access to resources, anthropologists and NGOs are going to win,” Lyall tells Mongabay. “It’s just an issue that needs to be highlighted and discussed, because it seems that there is increasingly a lot of potential … for further conflict across the Ecuadorian Amazon.”
Ties to the land
Lagartococha sits in the east of the Cuyabeno Reserve, the second-largest protected area in continental Ecuador. It brims with primary forest, floods periodically throughout the year and is home to jaguars, harpy eagles (Harpia harpyja) and the endangered Amazon pink dolphin (Inia geoffrensis). At the same time, threats from oil and timber extraction loom nearby.
Members of the Zancudo Cocha community who were fleeing rubber tappers came to the region about a century ago, according to a letter by Lyall and Tod Swanson, associate professor of religious studies at Arizona State University, in the U.S., who supported the Zancudo Cocha in court.
In that time, the community formed spiritual and ancestral ties to Lagartococha, Lyall and Swanson write.
The Zancudo Cocha don’t live in the Lagartococha sector, as per their agreement with the environment ministry to protect the intangible zone, says Moya, the community leader. But he says they hunt, fish and station land guardians there for conservation of the forests. They also bring tourists to the area.
“Our ancestors protected these lands against invaders and looters, and even fought in wars against Peru on those lands, our home and our jungles,” he adds. “This is the reason why today there are still abundant natural resources, fish and animals in the sector. Our lack of houses [there] doesn’t mean it’s not ours.”
But the Siekopai people say their ancestors inhabited the land before the Zancudo Cocha community. For them, Pë’këya is the sacred center of their origin story, but disease, war and cauchero (rubber tappers) displaced them from this part of their homeland. Their request for the land title is part of an effort to reclaim Indigenous lands in government hands, says Piaguaje, the Siekopai leader. They also say they hope to create a binational territory that brings together their existing Siekopai lands in Ecuador and Peru.
With colonization and land rights legislation, those last to migrate onto lands were often the ones who had a say in drawing fixed borders or forging agreements with colonial governments — sometimes without the proper consultation of other Indigenous communities.
But multiple sources say the question of who has the exclusive or strongest claim to the land is complex. For centuries, many Indigenous peoples migrated around and intermingled with each other, forming deep ties to the lands they shared, often without borders, according to researchers and Indigenous leaders. Many were nomadic hunter-gatherers, and some were forced to find new lands by colonization and violent resource extraction.
Indigenous A’i Cofán also used the land, according to the testimonies of elders, Borman says. “Everybody used that area.”
That includes the Siona and Siekopai, says Miguel Ángel Cabodevilla, a historian and author on the Amazon. No one exclusively possessed land as people understand the concept today, he adds.
“A small land like Lagartococha, was it used by only one people?” Cabodevilla tells Mongabay in an email. “We want simple and short answers to complex problems.”
Banner image: Boat in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve in Ecuador’s Amazon. Image by Ranil Wijeyratne via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
Additional reporting by Aimee Gabay.
Read part 4:
Landmark Indigenous land title in Ecuador protected area still in limbo
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