Detecting disasters on community lands in the Amazon: film highlights indigenous struggle

Tens of thousands of indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon have been fighting decades of contamination of their natural resources by foreign and domestic oil companies. Oil spills, leaky pipelines, and dumping of toxic production waters have polluted soils, gardens, rivers and lakes, as well as the fish and other animals living there, for more than 40 years. Health problems resulting from drinking and washing with waters contaminated by billions of barrels of toxic waste include epidemics, diarrhea, and skin diseases. These problems continue, though the government frequently blocks or ignores the people’s protests, or it sides with industry’s efforts to hide its trail of impact. Clean-up crew at an oil-contaminated stream in Loreto, northern Peru after a 2016 spill, one of several that year from the PetroPeru pipeline. Image credit: Al Jazeera, YouTube The short film “Detecting Disasters” explores one action the Kukama Kukamiria and other indigenous groups are taking to strengthen their case and reduce future damage to their resources—using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, a.k.a. drones) to monitor their lands. The Kukama Kukamiria people’s territory in northern Peru includes the exceptionally biologically diverse Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, which has also been invaded and drilled by oil industry teams. Contamination from oil and gas spills in 2014 in the Kukama Kukamiria people’s water still imperils the community. They and other groups teamed up with the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest  (AIDESEP),  an organization representing indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon, and U.S. non-profits to learn to…

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