2013 Winner: Indigenous Youth Perspectives, Oil Development and Human Environmental Rights in Ecuadorian Amazonia

Project Information
Indigenous Youth Perspectives, Oil Development and Human Environmental Rights in Ecuadorian Amazonia
Social Sciences
Latin American and Latino Studies
The history of oil extraction in Ecuadorian Amazonia, the Oriente, is characterized by a disproportionate experience of the industry’s adverse effects by Indigenous communities. Current scholarship on the impact of the oil industry largely focuses on older generations of Indigenous people who are no longer a demographic majority of Indigenous populations. Cultural, economic, and ecological hybridity characterize the lives of what are now primarily youthful Indigenous populations, lives that are temporally, and often physically, encompassed by the oil industry. Using a photographic and a verbal investigative methodology—each created for, and piloted during, summer 2012 fieldwork—this investigation focuses on the perspectives of a culturally and economically diverse sample of young Indigenous people, more specifically, on their perceptions of the symbolic and material resources available in their communities. Data analysis reveals tensions in the abundance and/or absence of resources, providing an empirical foundation for evaluating the effectiveness of Ecuador’s oil as development model—meaning the promise of funding State-sponsored development with oil rents—and its actual and potential impacts on human environmental rights in the Oriente.
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Students
  • Nestor Silva (Merrill)
Mentors