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In 2005, Judith Kimerling was invited to attend a gathering of Indigenous groups in Coca. There, Kimerling unexpectedly ran into Penti Baihua, a Waorani Indigenous man. He asked her to visit Bameno to talk with his community about how they and other Waorani groups were continuing to lose territory to oil operations and colonists who settled along oil roads. Kimerling accepted his invitation knowing that those weren’t the only threats to Waorani groups.
Though Penti had not yet mentioned it, she had heard about violence between illegal loggers and uncontacted Waorani families. In 2003, a massacre of more than two dozen Tagaeri or Taramonae people was widely reported in the Ecuadorian press.
Now, Kimerling is representing Conta, a teenage girl whose family was attacked, before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In this case, the court will rule on the rights of “uncontacted” peoples for the first time.
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📸: Courtesy of the Inter American Court of Human Rights and Judith Kimerling, Katie Surma/Inside Climate News
