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Moi Enomenga is a leader of the Waorani people in the Ecuadorian Amazon. When Moi was a child, his people made contact with the outside world, and his family was forced to move to a missionary settlement. Within the first week at the mission, over thirty of his family members had died from an epidemic of smallpox. Moi attended a mission school through his teen years. Like many of his generation, Moi was curious about the outside world.
When he was eighteen, Moi was hired by an oil company working on land that once belonged to the Waorani. Moi saw the devastating effects that oil development was having on communities and the environment. He quit his job and began organizing his people to confront the missionaries and oil companies that were threatening their traditional way of life and the still unbroken forests of their homeland.
Moi singlehandedly organized all of the Waorani communities and created the Waorani Federation. Moi’s tireless efforts resulted in the Waorani gaining legal title to an area of more than 650,000 hectares of primary rainforest. Since that time, Moi has been a staunch opponent of the multinational oil companies that continue to threaten the Waorani territory and undermine their autonomy.
In recent years, oil companies have again begun to illegally enter Waorani territory, causing conflict and sickness, and polluting their food and water supplies. In addition, the Waorani are being threatened by well armed illegal loggers who are rapidly cutting hardwoods in Waorani territory.
Land is Life is working closely with Moi and other Waorani leaders to defend their territories against illegal logging and petroleum extraction. We have also supported ecotourism and other alternative economic development projects that are controlled by the Waorani themselves and can help them safeguard their lands.
Land is Life has provided the Waorani with funding for travel and communications expenses. We have funded trips for Waorani leaders to New York and Washington D.C. to seek support for the Waorani from the U.N., environmental organizations and others. Land is Life has helped them to raise funds to develop an infrastructure for their organization and build alliances with other organizations that can support their efforts.
A few years ago, a group of oil companies headed by PetroBras (the Brazilian oil company) was organizing a meeting in Ecuador to announce new plans for drilling on Waorani land. Land is Life was able to raise funds to hire three small aircraft that transported over 100 Waorani leaders to the meeting, where they surprised PetroBras and unanimously rejected their plans to enter Waorani land.
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