Harakmbut Ancestral Landscape and Resource Rights
PPI affiliate Alex Alvarez is assisting the regional indigenous federation of Madre de Dios (FENAMAD, Federación Nativa del Río Madre de Dios y afluentes), Peru in their effort to strengthen the social and symbolic links between Harakbmut communities and their ancestral homelands (Proceso de Reconstrucción del Territorio Ancestral Harakmbut), a process which is in turn intended to offer an important legal and social safeguard against the threat from large-scale commercial extractive operations on the Harakmbut and their lands. Since 1989 the FENAMAD has actively lobbied and struggled for the land rights of the Harakmbut. In an attempt to help protect the Harakmbut ancestral homelands from the invasion by immigrant gold miners, loggers and oil companies, the FENAMAD was able to persuade the Peruvian government to declare a sizeable portion of the Harakbmut ancestral lands as a Communal Reserve in 2002. Despite these efforts, oil companies have been granted exploration rights in the reserve, which includes the fragile headwaters of several tributaries of the Madre de Dios and an area of key strategic and symbolic importance for the Harakmbut.
The process of on-site mapping and documentation of ancestrally occupied sites began in 2008, in the native community of Masenawa, and are due to continue during 2009-2010.
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 Three generations of the Irey family, from the Masenawa clan and the Arakmbut sub-group, annotate the routes linking the different sections of the Harakmbut ancestral homelands. Photo: A. Alvarez |
