- A court in Ecuador ordered the delivery of a property title within the Cuyabeno Reserve to the Siekopai Nation, intensifying a long-simmering dispute with the Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha community, which also has claims to the land.
- The ruling challenges an existing 2008 land and conservation agreement between the Kichwa community and the environment ministry, with the former set on armed resistance.
- Some observers argue that the government’s failure to properly consult all affected groups before signing land agreements has fueled this dispute.
- Indigenous people are calling for a peaceful resolution of the conflict amid growing concerns that the ruling could impact other land agreements and intensify Indigenous land conflicts in Ecuador’s Amazon.
This is Part 1 of a four-part series on Indigenous land rights in Ecuador. Read Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
In Ecuador, a 2023 court decision that recognizes one Indigenous community’s rights to own part of a protected area in the Amazon has escalated a long-simmering conflict with another Indigenous people that uses and has claims over the same piece of land.
Indigenous leaders say they worry that the precedent set by the case, which impacts an existing land and conservation agreement with the government, could set off a chain of similar conflicts in protected areas across Ecuador’s Amazon.
In November 2023, three provincial court judges ordered Ecuador’s environment ministry to deliver a property title to the Siekopai Indigenous people for
At the time, rights advocates celebrated the decision for acknowledging the Siekopai’s ancestral bond with the land in question, and they say it could open the door to the recognition of other Indigenous claims to land in protected areas.
“This return is not only an act of territorial recovery, but also a process of restoring our historical memory and our spiritual connection to our territory,” says Justino Piaguaje, leader of the Siekopai Nation, who call the land Pë’këya. “Returning reaffirms our relationship with Ñañë-Paina, our God, who taught us to live in harmony and interconnection with the jungle, with the spirits, the rivers and all the beings that inhabit them.”
But the land in question, also called Lagartococha, had also been part of a 2008 land and conservation agreement, known in Spanish as a convenio, between the Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha community and Ecuador’s environment ministry. The agreement recognized their legal ancestral rights to occupy and use 172,575 hectares (426,442 acres) of land that’s inside what is today the Cuyabeno Reserve.
However, the November 2023 ruling states that the Siekopai (or Secoya) are the legitimate owners with full dominion over part of the area, the 42,360 hectares, and the judges found that the ministry had violated the Siekopai’s land rights by signing the convenio with another community, the Zancudo cocha, without respecting their ancestral claim.
Members of the Zancudo Cocha community who use the land for hunting and fishing say they were frustrated by the ruling. In response to the decision, the community is engaging in armed resistance to keep the Siekopai off the land, with each side alleging the other began the violent confrontation.
“We feel like they violated our constitutional rights, and that there is a great injustice,” says Enrique Moya Tangoy, leader of the Zancudo Cocha community.
“[The judges] handed over more than 40,000 hectares of land managed by [our] community without ever agreeing to adequately listen to us or visit us.”
The ruling also has the potential to upend other existing agreements involving ancestral territories within protected areas across the country, say legal experts, Indigenous leaders and researchers, and it could lead to situations in which communities with ancestral ties to the same territory in other areas take lands from each other.
Several sources have blamed the government for wrongfully creating such pacts that don’t meet Indigenous rights standards in the first place.
“The heart of the problem — and it’s currently being presented as if it’s a problem between communities — is that the Ecuadorian state went and entered agreements in ways it shouldn’t have, which then caused these types of issues,” says Verónica Potes, a lawyer who wrote an independent legal analysis, known as an amicus brief, for the Siekopai in the case. “These agreements are ones … the state gave out improperly because they didn’t do their prior due diligence to see which other peoples had these as ancestral lands.”
While the ministry mediated a dialogue in 2007 to address the land dispute and reach a resolution before the convenio was signed, Siekopai leaders argue the process was flawed and that their assembly rejected it. Meanwhile, the Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha community uphold it as a final agreement.
The environment ministry did not respond to Mongabay’s questions regarding the dialogue, dispute and other related issues.
After a February 2025 hearing, a judge ordered the environment ministry to enforce the 2023 ruling and provide the Siekopai with legal title by April 11, even threatening to fine the environment minister for every day the ruling wasn’t implemented. But the ministry still hasn’t given the title to the Siekopai. During this tense, ongoing standoff, some Indigenous leaders say they worry the implementation of the judge’s orders without mediation will inflame existing tensions over the land, and they are calling for an urgent resolution.
Nivaldo Yiyoguaje, president of NOA’IKE, an organization that represents Indigenous A’i Cofán people in the area , says he’s also worried about oil and mining companies using divisions between Indigenous communities in “divide and rule” tactics to implement projects.
“Regardless of the problem, we have to sit down and find peaceful solutions to prevent conflicts from breaking out between Indigenous nationalities across Ecuador’s Amazon,” Yiyoguaje tells Mongabay. “We have to reestablish the harmony that we had between ourselves.”
Banner image: Lagartococha, or Pë’këya, in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve in Ecuador, western Amazon. Image courtesy of Nico Kingman / Amazon Frontlines.
Additional reporting by Aimee Gabay.
Update (07/15/2025) : One sentence of additional context from other parts of this series, regarding the 2007 dialogue, was added to this article.
Read Part 2:
Indigenous groups debate use of land agreements in Ecuador’s protected areas
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