The Huaorani
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Our hosts have long inhabited the headwaters of the Amazon, living as nomadic hunters and gatherers with no outside contact until the end of the 1950s, and at least one clan continues to shun all contact with the outside world. According to their folklore, they migrated to this area a long time ago to escape from cannibals. The Huaorani speak a language unrelated to any other; their name means "the people", while everyone else is cowore, or "non-human" (that's you).
In 1956, when the Huaorani became the last of Ecuador's indigenous peoples to be contacted by missionaries, their territory extended from the Napo River in the north to the Curaray River in the south. After the missionaries, the oil companies came looking for new reserves as the global demand for fossil fuels increased. The Huaorani live on top of one of Ecuador's largest oil deposits and since its discovery have been forced to deal with the presence of oil companies and other outsiders on the land they have called home for at least a thousand years.
Numbering approximately 2,400 individuals, the Huaorani maintain a largely traditional lifestyle living directly in and from the rainforest. Nowadays, their territory - some 680,000 ha/1.7 million acres -- is only about one third the size of their traditional land, and they have no oil or mineral rights. The first official Huaorani protectorate was created in 1983, and the current much larger Huaorani Ethnic Reserve was established in 1990, at which time they formed the Organización de Nacionalidad Huaorani de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana (ONHAE) to defend their interests, and in 2007 changed the name to Nacionalidad Waorani del Ecuador (NAWE).
