hola — Miñigua is one of the elders of the Waorani tribe. He was born before the Waorani were `contacted´ by Christian missionaries in the 1960s.

Even though oil exploitation has wreaked havoc in much of the Ecuadorian rainforest for the last 50 years, it´s probably the Waorani people who have suffered the wrath of oil exploitation most violently. The Waorani are the tribe of most recent `contact´ in the Ecuadorian Amazon. They had lived for centuries in the jungle as hunters and gatherers, fiercely defending their territory against any intruders. Their warrior prowess and the force with which they had fought outsiders had earned them name of ‘aucas’ or savages. However, by the 1960s, oil companies coveted their land and missionaries their souls. And so, the Waorani were pulled from the jungle to the crosshairs of an oil-thirsty modern society. Since then, the Waorani people have known little more than oil exploitation and the devastation that accompanies it: oil spills, pollution, logging, prostitution, and alcoholism.

On August 20, 2023, Ecuadorians approved a referendum to halt oil drilling in the Yasuní National Park, home to the Waorani people, as well as to two other indigenous communities living in voluntary isolation, the Tagaeri and Taromenane. While the popular decision is set to result in the loss of about 12% of Ecuador's crude oil output, it sends a clear message that the people reject the country's dependence on oil revenues and hope for a different model for growth and development.

The series compiles images from nearly a dozen trips to Waorani territory over the past decade. The photos are printed on cotton paper and are stained with crude-oil marks made with a large variety of leaves from the rainforest, in order to communicate the violence and the destruction of extractive industries and its brutal impacts on indigenous peoples.