URGENT ACTION: Stop oil exploration on tribal lands in the Amazon

Jaguar People

Deep in the Amazon Uncontacted Frontier live Matsés Indians, known also as the Jaguar People. Their land is being invaded by loggers, drug traffickers and oil workers who bring genocidal violence and disease. This is forcing the uncontacted Matsés to live on the run. A national park has been created on the Indians’ land, but this won’t protect them. There is already an oil concession inside, and the government wants to allow oil exploration to take place. This will be devastating for the Indians.  They urgently need our help. Please demand that the government prohibit all oil exploration on their land.

 

The only way to protect the Indians is to create an uncontacted indigenous reserve exclusively for them on their ancestral land, where no drilling, mining or logging can take place. The creation of the national park is not enough.

If this isn’t done soon, the uncontacted Matsés could be wiped out.

 
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To: secretariageneral@presidencia.gob.pe
Cc: aluna@cultura.gob.pe, egalarza@minam.gob.pe, gtamayo@minem.gob.pe, pgamboa@sernanp.gob.pe
Bcc: advocacy@survivalinternational.org (optional, but important for our records)
Subject: Please prohibit oil exploration on uncontacted tribe's land

Dear President Kuczynski, 

The lives of uncontacted Matsés and other Indians in northern Peru are in danger. 

I urge your government to both prohibit oil exploration in the Sierra del Divisor National park and to cancel the oil concession Block 135. 

No oil exploration should ever take place on land that is home to uncontacted Indians because of the risks that outsiders pose to their health. Recent history shows how encounters with oil workers and other outsiders can wipe out most of an uncontacted tribe within the first year of contact.

It is vitally important that the Indians’ land is secured through the creation of the Yavarí Tapiche uncontacted indigenous reserve. This will give them the best chance to survive and to determine their own futures.

If their land is not recognized and protected in accordance with Peru’s Law 28736 and ILO Convention 169, the uncontacted Matsés face catastrophe.

Yours sincerely,