Ecuadorian Huaorani photographs by Amelia Opalinska
April 17th, 2010 § 1 Comment
For more than half a century, indigenous Huaoranis in the Amazonian region of Ecuador have been courted by exploitative entities, ranging from evangelical Christian missionaries who dropped cooking pots on them from helicopters in the 1950s to international oil companies who today facilitate their acquisition of DVD players.
Below is a series of photographs of Huaorani villages by Amelia Opalinska, taken during our hitchhiking trip through Ecuador last year. My essay “Oil and Aguardiente in the Ecuadorian Elections” chronicles our interactions with various indigenous groups in the context of the national elections held on April 26, 2009, and with one of the participants in a Huaorani massacre of members of a tribe existing in voluntary isolation.
Click on each of the photos below to view a larger image.
A film worth watching: Taromenani
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBbcURQQi_E (trailer)
(describes also the Waorani/Huaorani living in and close to the Yasuni National Park)
Issue-related article of 2006:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33959