Indigenous people have lived in the Amazonian forest for thousands of years, hunting, gathering, and living sustainably on the forest resources. Until relatively recently, many indigenous people did not know that a world existed outside the rainforest, for the majority of these people, their meeting with the outside world has not been a happy one.

Eight indigenous nationalities inhabit the El Oriente region of eastern Ecuador in the Ecuadorian Amazon: Huaorani; Quichua, Secoya; Siona; Achuar; Shuar, Cofan and Zaparo. In the 1950s, when Western missionaries arrived, it is believed that 350,000 indigenous people occupied the territory, now that figure stands at approximately 60,000. Contact with the outside world brought diseases against which their bodies had no immunity, leading to many deaths. Attempts to acculturalise indigenous peoples to the ways of the West have meant that the social cohesion of communities have been eroded and broken down and ancient cultures lost. Then, the 1970s saw the arrival of the biggest and most enduring threat to the indigenous people of El Oriente. Oil exploration began.

Since the 1970s, the indigenous people have witnessed a rapid and widespread erosion of their territories and their cultures. No previous contact with the outside world and no knowledge of Western business meant that many tribes lost or gave away land with very little recompense, while the Ecuadorian government sold land cheaply without consulting the indigenous people who lived there. The Ecuadorian oil boom failed to deliver its bright promise of wealth and development.

However, the indigenous people of the Ecuadorian Amazon did not remain naive to Western ways for long. Ecuador may be one of the poorest countries in the world, but the indigenous people who live throughout the country have been forced to become some of the world's most strident and organised grass-roots activists.

Indigenous Amazonian groups use the Internet, direct action and the media to get the message across that the destruction of the rainforest must be halted. In 1993, the Secoya took out a landmark legal case against Texaco alleging pollution of their lands. Texaco disputes these allegations and the case has yet to be resolved. And in 1998, the Achuar began a global campaign through environmental organisations to highlight the oil exploration that was being planned in their territory. The indigenous people are calling for a moratorium on oil exploration for 15 years.

In the meantime, some of the indigenous people have organised themselves to protect what remains of their land and culture by organising their own conservation programmes and by promoting ecotourism - tourism that respects and sustains the environment and local cultures. They want the world to know the scale of the damage being done to the rainforest and why it is in everybody's interest that it stops now.

Read more about the Amazon's INDIGENOUS PEOPLE here.