Hello,
We, Chelsea Viteri and Zia Kandler, have been working for the past 9 months on a research project in collaboration with Accion Ecológica about the impacts of large scale mining on the lives of women in Ecuador. This project utilizes women’s personal narratives to raise awareness about the profound damage mining causes to the earth, women, and the future of humanity. To be able to complete this project and spread the voices of these women as far as possible, we are reaching out to you for support.
These communities are located in the south of Ecuador near the border with Peru where a Chinese mining company has illegally seized the ancestral territory of the Shuar people without the prior consultation nor consent. There have been consistent human rights violations as this mining project expands rapidly, leading to the dispassion of the lands of entire communities, the huge influx of men into small towns, and mass contamination of the rivers.
While Chelsea is writing an academic paper on the subject, we also want to be able to be able to make these stories accessible to a wider audience. Therefore, we wrote a short story based on the life of Rosario Wary, a 107 year old Shuar woman who is fighting for her ancestral land and wellbeing of the future generations by refusing to leave her land.
We believe that this work should be able to be accessible the largest amount of people possible and support the fight for the recognition of indigenous lands and histories, for this reason we hope to hire an amazing indigenous artist from Ecuador to illustrate this story and another person to translate the story into Shuar. In other to be able to hire the artist and translate the story, we are reaching out to you! This is important and we cannot do it on our own.
Can we count on you? Any donation no matter the amount helps us get closer to our goal!
Please support us in moving towards our goal of distributing far and wide these amazing stories of resistance, survival, and the fight for a healthy planet by donating today to our campaign.
Thank you so much for all of your support in making this project a reality!
For more information in English:
https://intercontinentalcry.org/ecuadors-standi...
http://nacla.org/news/2017/01/26/buen-vivir-whom
For more information in Spanish:
http://www.accionecologica.org
http://anred.org/spip.php?article13243