Minga on territoriality, ownership and self-governance by Indigenous peoples

Published by AIDESEP on 9 October 2023, https://aidesep.org.pe/noticias/minga-de-territorialidad-titularidad-y-autogobiernos-por-pueblos-indigenas/

Gathered in Lima on 6 and 7 October, the undersigned leaders, wise men and women and young people from the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle - AIDESEP (Board of Directors and regional organisations) and from the Autonomous Territorial Governments of Indigenous Peoples - GTAs, with the participation of leaders from the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon Basin - COICA, and various allies in solidarity, during the 2nd National Meeting for the Articulation of Strategies for the Consolidation of Integral Territoriality and Autonomous Indigenous Governments; after the debate of extensive reports on territorial and organisational processes, we reached the following agreements and conclusions:

To ratify the decision to move towards the horizon of the great objective and historical right of the Amazonian Indigenous movement of Peru to continue with the practice of self-determination and the recovery of our ancestral forms of self-government of our peoples, based on the agreements of the 24th General Assembly of AIDESEP (2017) and of the GTAs. We are aiming for the integral socio-cultural reconstitution of the 51 Amazonian Indigenous peoples as subjects of collective rights with identities expressed in our own juridical cultures, which sustains the recovery of the vital existential interdependence with the integral collective ancestral territoriality of each people, linked to their legal personality or ownership as a people and the autonomous territorial self-government of each INDIGENOUS PEOPLE. It is not a new model, but rather it is about counteracting the imposition of the colonial and republican model, and recovering our ancestral self-government updated to face new processes.

Specify that progressing with this vision includes respect for and coordination with communities, federations, regional and other Indigenous organisational forms; internships in the territories of the GTAs for those peoples that are evaluating this great horizon; education and training schools; and above all, the construction, according to the particularities and challenges of each people at the pace of their own process, including the strategies, stages and priorities, in parallel or prior to the territorial issue, as appropriate, of collective policies on education, justice, women, identity, youth, health, economy, territories, surveillance, among others.

To sustain that these rights are inextinguishable, and are contemplated in our Customary Law: the agreements of the current Constitution (arts.3, 55, 88, 89, 149, 191), rulings of the Constitutional Court (N°1126-2011, N° 00906-2010-Comunidad Kukama), ILO Convention 169 (arts.6, 7, 13, 14), the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (arts.3, 4, 9, 26), jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the judgments of the Awas Tingni case of 31/08/2001, the Saramaka People of 28/02/2007, Garífuna, Yakye Axa of 17/06/2005) and the American Declaration on Indigenous Rights (art. 25).

To warn about the urgency of this process, considering the growing and profound crisis, de-institutionalisation, authoritarianism and widespread corruption of the Peruvian State at central, regional and local levels, in the context of which various concessions and the ecological, social and cultural destruction of extractivism (mining, agribusiness, logging, hydrocarbons) and illicit crops are widespread in the Amazon, with its growing and unpunished social violence and the murder of Amazonian defenders. This also finances internal community divisions and takes advantage of the supposedly "freely available" areas for land trafficking, which are the product of the reduction, cornering and division of our peoples into communities. Illegal economies are expanding and must be responded to with the unity of each Indigenous people.

Affirm that the imposition of Natural Protected Areas (ANPs), Regional Conservation Areas (ACRs) on top of ancestral territories of Indigenous peoples will not be accepted because they imply the "immatriculation" or State takeover and subsequent privatisation, and are a form of expropriation of Indigenous territories. We therefore urge international cooperation not to finance them and to support ancestral Indigenous cultural conservation.

Strengthen socio-political alliances, united, complementary and solidarity-based work, with mutual support and joint self-defence between the communities, the local and regional organisations of AIDESEP and the Autonomous Territorial Governments as a guarantee to advance towards the stated objectives. The only guarantee to stop the destruction of the Amazon is our unified territorial defence by peoples and not the little that communities can do in isolation.

To point out that the exercise of our rights of self-determination with Integral Territoriality, Legal Ownership by People and Autonomous Governments is the basis and the way forward to achieve social changes in Peru that imply recognising us as a plurinational society and State, and reforms that respect this reality, in the constitutional structure of the State (executive, legislative, judicial and electoral powers) at central, regional and local levels, with plurinational policies in the economy, education, justice, health and other public services.

Jointly support and implement the "Action Plan Guidelines for Territoriality, Ownership and Autonomy as Peoples", a document that forms part of Annex 1 of this agreement.

Set up a collegiate Coordination Commission, as detailed in Annex 2, to be responsible for elaborating and implementing actions towards the above-mentioned objective.

Convene the Indigenous peoples, who are not constituted as autonomous governments, to carry out, through their regional organisations of AIDESEP, the assemblies of socialisation, training and implementation of these processes to elaborate the specific strategies to complete the documentation appropriate to the particular reality of each people, of articulation and social reconstitution as an Indigenous people, self-demarcation and georeferencing of their integral ancestral territory (combining, according to each case, with partial advances in communal titling), boundary agreements with other peoples, territorial surveillance and control systems, integral cultural self-zoning, constitutional statutes of their Autonomous Territorial Government and Life Plans as peoples, with gender and intergenerational equity with the youth and with the respective legal, ecological, anthropological and historical studies, which will be notified to the State of Peru, the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the United Nations (UN).

Strengthen the already initiated processes of autonomy, in coordination with their GTAs and the regional organisations to which they are linked to support their struggles in defence of their rights, complete their documentation files and present them to the State and attend to their other requirements.

Call for solidarity and support from social movements and organisations and international cooperation in human, environmental and climate rights, considering that collective Territoriality, Ownership and Self-Government as Indigenous Peoples is an effective and sustainable alternative to the global civilisational crisis in order to avoid the point of no return of Amazonian destruction, and to move towards clean energy without the impact of fossil fuels and to stop the catastrophe of global warming and climate crisis.

Lima, 07 October 2023.

Signing this document are the leaders and youth of the following organisations and GTAs:

• Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESEP).
• Regional Association of Indigenous Peoples of the Central Forest (ARPI SC).
• Coordinator for the Development and Defence of the Indigenous Peoples of the San Martin region (CODEPISAM).
• Machiguenga Council of the Urubamba River (COMARU).
• Regional Coordinator of the Indigenous Peoples of San Lorenzo (CORPI-SL).
• Regional Coordinator of the Indigenous Peoples of AIDESEP Atalaya (CORPIAA).
• Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River and its tributaries (FENAMAD).
• Regional Organisation Aidesep Ucayali (ORAU).
• Regional Organisation of Indigenous Peoples of the Northern Peruvian Amazon (ORPIAN-P).
• Regional Organisation of Indigenous Peoples of the East (ORPIO).
• Territorial Government of the Awajún Nation (GTAA).
• Territorial Government of the Wampis Nation (GTANW).
• Territorial Government of the Chapra Nation (GTANCH).
• Arakbut Nation.
• Ese Eja Nation.
• Autonomous Territorial Government of the Shawi Nation.
• Matsés People.
• Machiguenga Nation.
• Kukama Kukamiria Nation.
• Kandozi Nation.
• Shawi Nation.
• Shiwilo Nation.
• Inka Nation of the Pastaza.
• Shipibo Konibo Xetebo Council (COSHIKOX).