18 The Path to Autonomy for the Wampís Nation

Shapiom Noningo and Frederica Barclay

The lives and territories of those peoples who

bravely defend their territories will endure

Pedro García Hierro, travelling companion (2015).

Background

Peru is not the only Latin American country in which Indigenous Peoples have suffered repeated attacks from the State since 2007, when the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was approved. This systematic onslaught has sought to curtail the constitutional guarantees provided to Indigenous peoples’ territories. Such rights had already been eroded by the 1993 constitutional reform in Peru, which eliminated the collective territories’ guarantees of inalienability and unseizability, and even went so far as to eliminate the communal system itself in order to facilitate and promote extractivism and neolatifundismo [concentration of the land in large-scale, private farms].

Former President Alan García Pérez (2007) offered a clear illustration of this at the time by labelling Indigenous Peoples as “second-class citizens” and calling them “dogs in the manger” for demanding respect for their territorial rights. It is now common knowledge that this historically accumulated burden of racism, together with a systematic program of unconsulted legal reforms, finally culminated in the so-called Baguazo or Bagua massacre of June 2009 (Lombardi, 2010; Manacés & Gómez Calleja, 2013).

This dramatic confrontation, in which the Wampís people played an active part, precipitated a collective analysis of the conditions required for Indigenous peoples’ survival in the face of the constitutional changes of the 1990s. This analysis was promoted by several peoples of northeastern Peru, grouped together in the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples-San Lorenzo (Coordinadora de Pueblos Indígenas-San Lorenzo / CORPI-SL). As Noningo notes (2017, pp. 10-11), in 1995, the Wampís of Kankaim sector “were debating a new territorial set-up [which] was to include the territories of ancestral use and occupation, thus remembering and consolidating the memory of the sociohistorical and cultural occupation.” In the mid-1990s, alerted by the Peruvian government’s increasingly evident desire to put the Peruvian Amazon up for auction, and together with the eight other peoples that made up the regional organization, the Wampís decided to self-demarcate their respective territories and establish the points of contiguity between them.¹ Despite all the adverse political signals, they found encouragement in the International Labour Organization’s Convention No. 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, adopted in 1989, which came into force in Peru in 1995, and in the UN Declaration (UNDRIP).² From the perspective of resisting and promoting their medium-term rights in the face of this obvious roll-back, Indigenous peoples began to prepare files documenting their history and territorial occupation in order to support their rights and territorial claims. In this process, with the advantage that their territory had not undergone any massive fragmentation, the Wampís adopted a perspective that was aimed at recovering the exercise of their territorial governance through the constructing of tools with which to exercise autonomy.

The Wampís Nation’s territory covers 1,327,000 hectares and extends over two of Peru’s Amazonian regions. In the Amazonas region, it covers the Kanus or Santiago River basin (Río Santiago district, Condorcanqui province, Amazonas region), which runs from the border with Ecuador to the Marañón River. In the Loreto region, it covers the middle and upper reaches of the Kankaim or Morona River, the source of which also lies in Ecuador. Linking the two basins, and criss-crossed by ancestral routes, is the Kampankias mountain range, rising to 1,435 metres, which is where many of the tributaries that feed both basins originate. The Wampís population of just over 15,000 inhabitants is spread across 85 settlements that make up 22 communities and annexes. The area currently enjoying communal titles comprises little more than 33% of the territory under the jurisdiction of the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampís Nation.

Active and Creative Resistance

Just as they resisted the attempted conquests of the Mochica kingdom of the northern coast around 600 AD and, later, that of the Inca Empire (late 15^th century), the Wampís exerted active armed resistance when the Spanish entered their territory, also attracted by the gold deposits. Colonial tradition and archives have documented how, from the 16^th century onwards, every Spanish attempt to advance was followed by local rebellions and, more often, rebellions coordinated with other peoples such as the Awajún, located to the west, or the Yakinia Shuar to the north. These rebellions were designated general uprisings because of their scope and force (Velasco, 1981; Juank, 1984). The reputation of a warrior people thus became firmly established.

This reputation, and their demonstrable resistance to colonial subordination, did not prevent foreign shiringa (hevea brasiliensis – rubber tree) extractors from later establishing commercial relations with a few local leaders at a time when the entire Amazon region was experiencing the rubber boom (1880-1914).³ Up to the start of the 20^th century, there were many reported attacks on rubber settlements in the Marañón, Kanus and around the mouth of the Kankaim (Morona) on the part of Wampís warriors, some of whose leaders are well remembered (Clark, 1954, pp. 226–227; Up de Graff, 1996).

The Wampís territory is located in an area that has been disputed by Peru and Ecuador since both republics were formed at the start of the 19^th century. This location, but above all the fact that the Santiago River (or Kanus River as the State should also call it) was considered the most strategic route in the event of a potential conflict and was later to become the focal point of the territorial dispute, discouraged State-sponsored settlement in the area.⁴ When, in the early 1980s, Fernando Belaunde’s government established a “living borders” program to promote occupation of the region, opposition from the Indigenous organizations and a lack of support from the army deprived it of the necessary support in this area (AIDESEP, 1981). In contrast, hundreds of settlers from other regions have gradually been settling in the border area, along the axis of the Marañón River and a projected highway from the west, in Awajún territory, which is why the Wampís have always rejected and continue to reject proposals to extend the road parallel to the Kanus River.

Given this set of circumstances, the Wampís territory remained somewhat removed from the integration efforts that were taking place through colonization. Instead, with a view to cultural assimilation, following the 1941 armed conflict between the two countries,⁵ Peru opted to invite missionaries from the Jesuit order and evangelical missionaries from the Summer Institute of Linguistics⁶ into the border region to establish schools. The entry of missionaries into Wampís territory — for the very first time — laid the foundations for a process of change that was to have profound long-term consequences. Beginning in the 1960s, the missionaries established primary schools, and families gradually began to accept these because they offered an opportunity to acquire new tools with which to defend themselves from the abuses that were resulting from increased trading along the Marañón River, and around the population center and later provincial capital, Santa María de Nieva. As in other parts of the Peruvian Amazon, these schools in turn gave rise to a gradual re-grouping of the population into nuclear settlements, even though the traditional pattern of the clans was to live spread out along the secondary tributaries of each river basin.

In the decade that followed, the Wampís organized to obtain land titles under the so-called 1974 Law on Native Communities, the first of its kind.⁷ In addition, together with the Awajún, they formed the Aguaruna Huambisa Council (CAH), a pioneer among Indigenous organizations in the Peruvian Amazon, which, with the few legal tools at its disposal, made significant gains in terms of land rights and dialogue with the Peruvian State. These gains included several agreements with the Peruvian government regarding education and health, as well as significant progress in the titling of communities in order to prevent colonization.

The Wampís and the Awajún that formed part of the new organization realized from the start that the Law on Native Communities was designed to fragment the Indigenous territories, thus making vast stretches of land available for the State to allocate to third parties. With this understanding of the policies, and through the system of delimited and titled communities, the Awajún and Wampís peoples thus tried as far as possible to rebuild their territorial integrity, subsequently calling on the Peruvian State to delimit “reserves” in order to guarantee future titled access to areas less accessible to possible colonization. As time went by, it became increasingly difficult to obtain new communal titles, but they still managed to expand their territories with the aim, as far as possible, of re-assembling them from the areas protected by communal titles. Guided by the principle of the need for dignity, which is deeply rooted in the Wampís culture, Indigenous peoples continued to demand what the law established and what they knew, quite apart from this, was their right.⁸

Although the Wampís left the CAH in the 1990s and formed independent organizations, especially in the Kanus basin, they retained their ability to influence up until the point when a number of processes converged. On the one hand, there was an increasingly evident intention on the part of the Peruvian State to implement reforms aimed at creating a market for land, liberalizing access to land in the Amazon and destroying the communal regime, thus threatening Indigenous rights.⁹ On the other, the process that began with the so-called “Cenepa War” (January-March 1995) between Ecuador and Peru and which concluded with a Final Peace Agreement signed by both countries in October 1998 came to modify the Peruvian geopolitical paradigm around the northern border, changing the nature of the relationship between the Peruvian State and the Wampís and Awajún peoples. Indigenous peoples thus lost the strategic influence that derived from their location on the contentious border, and which had resulted in a tacit or de facto (but nevertheless consistently confirmed) agreement (Barclay, 2019). Through this agreement, both Indigenous Peoples had achieved a high degree of dialogue with the Peruvian State unique in the national context.

This betrayal of the agreement was revealed immediately after the signing of the new 1998 Peace Accord. Thus, even before the so-called Baguazo, the Peruvian State had taken measures that seriously and directly affected the interests of the Wampís and Awajún, and which were perceived as affronts to the people and attacks on their dignity. In 2006, the State ignored an agreement by which, with the consent of the people, a national park was to be established on their ancestral territories in the Cóndor Mountains to protect the area from mining interests, withdrawing part of the agreed area precisely in order to grant mining concessions. In fact, this happened on the very same day that the area of the Ichigkat Muja National Park was also reduced. That same year, the State also superimposed an oil plot (plot 116) on a territory shared with the Awajún and destined for the conservation of the Tuntanain mountain range, making oil activity an explicit priority in the law creating it. In addition, a large part of the ancestral territory of the people was converted into a “reserved zone yet to be categorized,” including the Kampankias mountain range in the heart of Wampís territory. For the Wampís, it became evident that the right to decide their own future as a people or a nation was being severely curtailed. Many Indigenous families felt that the Peruvian State’s intended aim was in fact to eliminate them (Santos Granero & Barclay, 2010).

Planning for Autonomy

The recovery of autonomy and dignity has been an underlying theme for Wampís thinkers for many decades, both before and after they collectively decided to lay down their weapons of armed resistance and instead demand enjoyment and exercise of their rights. An awareness of ILO Convention No. 169 (of constitutional standing) and of the UNDRIP has enabled the Wampís to understand that the international framework is supportive of their desire to exercise autonomy and Indigenous governance over their territories.

Strictly speaking, the 1974 Law on Native Communities did not prevent the people from piecing together their ancestral spaces via the legalization of their communal territories and thus exercising the autonomy granted to the communities. However, developments in the legal system and policies of Amazonian settlement made this path unfeasible for the Wampís. In their current legal version, the communal titles fragment the titled area of the territory into areas demarcated for and owned by the Indigenous community, and areas registered as merely ceded for their use by the State. Moreover, communal territories may have numerous other systems superimposed on them that involve or prioritize third parties and which result in restrictions on the exercise of their rights.¹⁰

As already mentioned, various peoples within CORPI-San Lorenzo’s jurisdiction had begun a process of self-delimitation and reflection on the relationship between the State and the Indigenous Peoples in the 1990s. As a result of this process, and through their participation in the Datem del Marañón provincial government, they managed to get the government to legalize a procedure by which the Indigenous Peoples could gain their autonomy, framing the law within the land-use planning procedure that the Peruvian State was then beginning to employ.¹¹ Within this same framework, and with the legal advice of the Peruvian-Spanish lawyer, Pedro García Hierro, a format was agreed upon for the preparation of files that could be used to support claims for the legalization of “integral territories.” As a result of this work, several “dossiers” were produced, some of which were submitted to Congress, which were then referred to the Ministry of Justice. Ultimately, however, the national authorities failed to take a decision on these claims based on the procedure established in the 2009 Municipal Ordinance, which nevertheless remains in legal force.

Given this experience, the Wampís decided to embark on a new path, one which — responding to their own historical moment — would allow them to make progress in exercising their autonomy. In essence, they decided to start creating their own instruments by which to govern their territory and interact with the Peruvian State, from their status as the Wampís Nation. Wampís leaders from both basins were involved in this task and spent more than two years debating the preamble and 94 articles of the Statute of the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampís Nation (GTANW). This was enacted in November 2015, “in memory of our ancestors and for our right to self-determination as a people and nation” at a self-proclamation event held at the GTANW headquarters.

After establishing the territory as indivisible, and proclaiming the language and self-designation of the Wampís Nation, the Statute declares that, in matters of citizenship:

The men and women of the Wampís Nation are, in turn, Peruvian citizens and enjoy equal rights and duties with other citizens. Respect for the Peruvian State and its representatives, and mutual correspondence with our authorities, is recognized as the basis for a peaceful and productive coexistence with Peruvian society. The Constitution of Peru and the International Human Rights Treaties that complement it constitute a framework which, together with this Statute, are recognized and respected by our people. (Art. 10)

The Autonomous Statute of the Wampís Nation is a technical and political instrument of government and socioterritorial governance that sets out the following basic structure: the Uun Iruntramu (a type of Congress), composed of 96 Iirunin or community representatives, and which forms the supreme body of the GTANW; the Central Executive Government of the Basin (Takatan Chichamrin), the basin government with its highest authority, the Matsatkamu Iruntramu, and the Communal Government. An adaptation of the communal statutes has since commenced in order to reconcile and harmonize these with the structure, roles and powers of the GTANW and its basin governments.

Alongside the drafting of the Statute, a document was compiled that provides historical anthropological justification of the continued existence of the Wampís Nation and its territorial occupation, based on a previous document (Surrallés et al., 2013), as well as a legal justification of the right to territory, following the guidelines of the dossiers agreed with CORPI-San Lorenzo. The document also includes a map of the Wampís territory accompanied by a memoir, the minutes of the meeting at which the communities came together to form the GTANW, border agreements with neighboring Indigenous Peoples, a sociohistorical and cultural map and the agreed upon sociopolitical pact. The proclamation of the GTANW Statute was followed a few months later by the submission of the aforementioned documentation to all branches of government: legislative, judicial and executive, including the main ministries and the regional governments of Loreto and Amazonas, in April 2016.

This submission was formal in nature and had the purpose of notifying the Peruvian State of the Wampís Nation’s desire and self-proclaimed decision to rebuild its autonomy and exercise it, understanding and impressing upon them that it was the will of a people who were not prepared to wait for the Peruvian State to adapt its legal system in order to exercise rights that were inherently theirs. As anomalous as it may seem, Peru has never adapted its legislation to international norms and standards to ensure that Indigenous peoples can be considered subjects of rights, and it remains the case that only communities are recognized as having legal status, and only they can be the owners of territories. For the Peruvian State, Indigenous Peoples are an abstract concept resulting from the sum of the communities (who do not necessarily manage to obtain registration or get their lands titled). They exist in the “names” of the communities, they exist in the title and text of numerous laws, and even as a designation of State departments, but the peoples themselves are denied the possibility of becoming subjects of law and, as such, exercising those political rights that Peru made their own by ratifying ILO Convention No. 169.¹²

By acting in this way, it is not the Wampís Nation’s intention to challenge the Peruvian State, of which the Wampís form a part as citizens, but to begin to implement a practice based on their rights, in the expectation that the conditions will be created for a structural change in the relationship between the State and the Indigenous Peoples. Likewise, the submission of the documentation in 2016 to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, appointed by the UN Commission on Human Rights, did not represent an act of secession.

From the perspective of the Wampís Nation, the path to self-construction of their autonomy has very solid technical and legal foundations: international legal instruments such as ILO Convention No. 169, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Human Rights System, all of which broadly develop the right to free determination or self-determination of Indigenous Peoples. The Wampís Nation and its territorial government are using these internationally enshrined instruments, which also form a part of the body of domestic constitutional texts. Indeed, the Peruvian State itself refers to them, in conjunction with its approval of the 2011 Law on Prior Consultation, albeit shrouded in a clear and characteristic lack of transparency with regard to its treatment of Indigenous Peoples and their rights.¹³ The Peruvian State cannot disavow a practice implemented by the Wampís Nation with clear national and international support, but neither is it currently willing to implement a regulatory framework by which to channel an approach that several Amazonian Indigenous Peoples, such as the Kandozi, Shawi, Achuar and others, are already using. The main cost for now is the inability to legally register the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampís Nation as a public institution, but there is nothing preventing it from operating as a representative institution of the Wampís Nation.

Challenges

Contrary to popular belief, however, the greatest challenges facing the Wampís do not stem from the lack of a legal framework that recognizes Indigenous Peoples as subjects of law or of a system by which to recognize their territories. It is true that the lack of an adequate administrative framework has thus far prevented the Superintendent of Public Registries from creating a register in which to record the Autonomous Territorial Government as a legal entity. It is also true that the Ministry of Culture has blindly and arbitrarily opposed the recognition of Indigenous Peoples as legal subjects, claiming that a Regional Ordinance negotiated by CORPI-SL at the request of the GTANW for that purpose is unconstitutional.¹⁴ When the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampís Nation proclaimed itself, it still seemed possible (given the bicentennial of independence) that Peruvian society would agree to their system for autonomy as an expression of their right to self-determination.¹⁵

From the GTANW’s perspective, however, until the political conditions for the above arise, it is still possible and necessary to strengthen their own capacities in order to make progress in political dialogue with the State, at different levels, and build protocols for positive and respectful relations. In fact, there are already different agreements, some more formal than others, with sectors of the Peruvian State whereby there is de facto cooperation and recognition of the institutional framework of and dialogue with the GTANW. At the same time, however, there are conflicts, with irreconcilable positions on issues such as an oil plot (plot 64) superimposed on the Wampís territory without any consultation.¹⁶

The GTANW understands that it will take time and political will, as well as active support from civil society, for Peru to develop an institutional framework that provides better conditions for the exercise of autonomy by the peoples who choose this path. For the moment, it has looked at other autonomous models existing in the region as a result of constitutional reforms (Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador) and whereby territorial jurisdiction is recognized, thus enabling them to access public funding, but does not currently feel they correspond to the model to which they aspire, since these systems subsume the autonomies within the State structure and require them to adapt to State procedures.

For the Wampís Nation, the external challenge is mainly one of constructing a “creative and positive” framework and mechanism for their political relations with the State and civil society in general, including the capacity to influence different sectors and levels of government. This model involves an active relationship, dialogue, assertiveness and respect, with the goal of achieving “a system of consultation” on everything that concerns and affects the life, integrity and dignity of the Wampís Nation.

In the meantime, the GTANW has also sought and gained sympathy for its process from various international forums and bodies, such as the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, an advisory body to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Inter-American Commission and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous peoples. The GTANW has called on these bodies to document existing experiences of self-government, autonomy and self-determination so that lessons can be learned from them and so that it can be demonstrated to nation-states that they do not represent a risk to national integrity, and that, in fact, they could contribute to equitable and sustainable development objectives. Significantly, the United Nations has published an online summary and translation of the Wampís Territorial Government Statute as well as the Socio-political pact, agreements and commitments. Preservation and conservation of living resources; nature, lands, territories, forests and biodiversity, signed in November 2016.¹⁷ Both the Forum and the Special Rapporteur have explicitly mentioned the Wampís Nation’s autonomy process in recent reports (Tauli Corpuz, 2020; IWGIA, 2019).

Nationally, the Wampís Nation has gained the support of successive Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian Peoples and Environment and Ecology committees of the Congress of the Republic, which has twice conferred its recognition on it, gaining the interest and respect of academics and human rights activists. There are several other peoples who are watching the steps being taken by the GTANW with interest, in particular (but not only) the peoples of the CORPI-San Lorenzo area.

The chosen path of proclaiming themselves a Wampís Nation without waiting for de jure recognition is certainly a great challenge. The Autonomous Territorial Government nevertheless considers that it is the internal challenges that are currently the most insurmountable. They are also the most urgent because, if not addressed, a point of no return could be reached in which there is no longer the ability to imagine a different future.

This is not a debate between traditionalists and non-traditionalists in Wampís society. No one is proposing a return to an older way of life in economic or cultural terms. It is neither desirable nor feasible. Schools and other means of coordination with the outside world have left their mark. The aim is to recover values and knowledge, develop mechanisms by which to effectively govern the territory and build proposals for a common future, something which, it must be said, Peruvian society lacks. The objective is further to recover social viability and conditions in the territory that are compatible with nature, dignity and thrifty well-being.

In recent decades, aspects of the Wampís’ organizational and cultural base have been seriously eroded and transformed, resulting in situations that make governance difficult. To give some examples: the occupation of land promoted by the model of settlements anchored around the existence of a school is drastically different from the traditional model, meaning there is now greater pressure on the forests along the main riverbanks, with consequent impacts on quality of life, nutrition and health, and a loss of biodiversity; the communal model that originally sought to guarantee rights has been transforming into a way of privatizing forests that occasionally generates conflicts and often results in inappropriate management of the common heritage; the use of money is no longer occasional but forms part of family strategies, making them more vulnerable; and with a third generation in school, now including men and women equally, there is widespread loss of forest knowledge, including on the variety of traditional food crops, and oral and/or medicinal traditions, in addition to a clear loss of respect for the Elders. Under these conditions, parents begin to conceive of a more desirable future for their children outside the territory, as do their sons and daughters themselves. Both the loss of the internal conditions for well-being in the territory and the racist and foreign devaluation of Indigenous ways of life play in favor of this. This is why Wampís governance includes creating the conditions to improve the local economy based on the use of biodiversity.

At the same time, patterns of behavior from outside have begun to be normalized in the communities, including violence against women and a decline in solidarity, given that internal control mechanisms are weaker now. Diagnosis of and reflection on the various pressing issues requires the inclusion of intergenerational and gender perspectives in order to make collective responses sustainable, as well as the economic and social investments they aim to achieve.

Other challenges are equally great, such as the fact that State intervention at the territorial level is increasing, albeit within the parameters of a unilateral vision of development. The expansion of State service provision (health, education) has meant that these services are increasingly decisive factors in a family’s life, reducing its margin for decision-making. At the same time, families tend to naturally assume that the care they receive derives not from their status as citizens but from that of being poor, because of their limited access to monetary resources (Campanario Baqué, 2019).¹⁸ As a result, their attitude toward the State has become increasingly passive, less critical and thus more pre-determined. All of this can be seen in the collective assessments promoted by the GTANW in order to define policies and lines of action.

While this is occurring at the level of families, there has also been an increasing tendency among the community’s authorities to demand services from the State without requiring that they respond to their own perceptions of need, resulting in a vision of development or well-being that ends up aligned with supply. Recovering its own vision of development, creating internal capacities, generating attitudes of vigilance and transparency, generating well-being without compromising the intergenerational resources of nature, are all highly important internal challenges that the Wampís Nation and its Autonomous Territorial Government have already identified as fundamental to achieving tarimat pujut, the collective well-being.

All of these manifestations are, in some sense, an expression of what Gruzinski (1991) has called the colonization of the imaginary. Faced with this, the Wampís Nation is seeking to diminish its destructive influence, generate internal capacities and channel the energies of generations that want a better life while ensuring that the conservation of biodiversity, water, life and values of solidarity are more fully expressed.

Faced with this colonization of the imaginary, which alienates culturally rooted creativity, the GTANW has set out to awaken the dreams of its members and include these in plans for the future, energizing a common vision and debates through its radio station, Tuntui, which broadcasts ten hours a day from the Kanus River. It has also made significant efforts to raise the profile of its new commitment to autonomy, including slogans such as “time is water” to give renewed value to the nature on which society depends. Part of these autonomy efforts is focused on renaming sites such as rivers, mountain ranges and communities, names that centuries of State presence have expropriated, hence the emphasis on and recovery of the proper place names, etc. This includes calling the Santiago River the “Kanus,” the Morona the “Kankaim,” and the Campankis mountain range the “Kampankias,” for example, and using expressions such as “nature’s bounty” to replace natural resources, signifying their own vision of their dependence on nature, with which a social and balanced relationship must be maintained. The Tuntui radio station and the Nakumak¹⁹ newspaper are priority instruments through which to socialize the collective agreements and commitments that are discussed and built on in the regular meetings of the Uun Iruntramu.

What Direction for the Wampís Nation and its Territorial Self-Government?

In the current globalized context, the Wampís Nation’s great dream is heading in various directions and on different levels. Internally, first of all, the aim is to achieve greater strength and consolidation as a life system, a self-affirmation that implies a collective awareness of sociohistorical and cultural origin, as well as the perpetual continuation of historical cultural identity, in order to exercise effective governance of the territory.

Secondly, the intention is to consolidate the system of territorial, forest and biodiversity conservation both as a system and as a human/nature binomial, especially for future generations. Thirdly, they want to gradually build self-reliance and the capacity to effectively and adequately lead, attend to and resolve the major problems currently affecting their life and the achievement of tarimat pujut. This implies a collective capacity to maintain knowledge, practices and sociocultural elements and, consequently, to reinstate to the maximum the value of the human/nature binomial as a form of coexistence and mutual dependence, reflected in respect for and a valuing of the person and nature. They want to achieve their own educational system in which intercultural and sociocultural values such as reciprocity, solidarity, honesty and integrity are fundamental.

This dream of the Wampís Nation, which is beginning to take shape through the formation of the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampís Nation, the production of internal agreements, policies and capacity building, does not yet meet the conditions for an institutionalization of autonomy within the national framework. From the Wampís perspective, however, this does not mean they have to wait for the Peruvian State and society to initiate a formal reform in this sense. Exercising autonomy through the GTANW now means tracing one’s own path, one that is open to other peoples moving in the same direction. For the time being, it means beginning to establish the different conditions for relations with the State at different sectors and levels, through political dialogue, something that entails de facto recognition, as well as recognition in the agreements and accords that are being signed with the different sectors and levels of the State. Opportunities should open up along this path until the institutional conditions exist for de jure recognition and respect for autonomies in Peru.

Through its interaction with other Indigenous Peoples’ autonomies in other parts of the world, GTANW has been promoting the establishment of a caucus of autonomies within the United Nations aimed at promoting the agenda for Indigenous autonomy and, from within this international forum, making efforts to raise the profile of the autonomies’ contribution to land governance.

More specifically, the Wampís Nation is seeking to address and resolve, autonomously, from its own vision, the needs of its members, families and collective, and is seeking to maintain a positive and creative relationship with the State and Peruvian society from a rights-based vision. The Wampís Nation has collectively adopted an agreement and commitment to maintain its sociocultural identity in perpetuity as a basis and condition of self-worth as a human group. The path chosen by the Wampís Nation by which to exercise autonomy and regain governance of their territory is sui generis, albeit not unique.

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