The Waorani, Waodani, or Huaorani, also known as the Waos, are an Indigenous people from the Amazonian Region of Ecuador (Napo, Orellana, and Pastaza Provinces) who have marked differences from other ethnic groups from Ecuador.
They comprise almost 4,000 inhabitants and speak the Waorani language, also known as Huoarani, Wao, and Sapela, a linguistic isolate that is not known to be related to any other language.
Their ancestral lands are located between the Curaray and Napo rivers, about 80 km (50 miles) south of El Coca. Since the 1940s, Their territory, approximately 190 km (120 miles) wide and 120–160 km (75 to 100 miles) from north to south, has been threatened by the oil industry and illegal logging. In the past, Waorani were able to protect their culture and lands from both indigenous enemies and settlers by force of arms.
In the last 60 years, they have forcibly shifted from a hunting and gathering society to living mostly in permanent forest settlements. As many as five communities, the Tagaeri, the Huiñatare, the Oñamenane, and two groups of the Taromenane, remain in voluntary isolation.
Etymology
The word (plural of 'person') means 'humans' or 'men' in . Before the mid 20th century, it included only those kin associated with the speaker. Others in the ethnic group were called Waodoni, while outsiders are known by the term (also written cowodi or cuwudi).
The name (or the alternative English spelling Waodani) represents a transliteration by English-speaking missionary linguists. The phonetic equivalent used by Spanish-speakers is (reflecting the absence of w in Spanish spelling). The sounds represented by the English and Spanish letters d and r are allophones in the Waorani language (also known as Sabela, Wao Terero).
The alternate name Auca is a pejorative exonym used by the neighboring Quechua persons, and commonly adopted by Spanish-speakers as well. ( in Quechua) means 'savage', which also gives the name to the Sociedad Deportiva Aucas football club.
History
18th century until 1940s There is indication of contact between the Waorani and "travelers and explorers in Waorani territory" related to rubber extraction in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, which were marked by violence and exploitation. In particular, evidence points at increased contact between Waorani persons and other non-indigenous persons during the rubber boom in the Putumayo region period between 1879 and 1911, also known as the Putumayo genocide. Peruvian, Colombia, French and Italian rubber traders started establishing rubber exploitation sites in the 1850s in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Research indicates that, "before 1910, the Waorani sometimes collected rubber to trade with traders in the lower Curaray River basin", but that they were also captured, enslaved, and forced to work in rubber haciendas. According to Javier Martínez-Sastre:"The Huaorani, likely cornered by other more powerful peoples from the north (Napo) and the Zápara from the south, would have remained, for a long time, “hidden” and protected from the white-mestizo penetration in very inaccessible places between the Napo and Curaray rivers. Possibly due to the pressure exerted from the north by the groups expelled to the interior of the Napo riverbanks after the arrival of the Spanish, and because in the south the Zápara population of the Curaray had been considerably reduced due to diseases from contact with the white-mestizo society and to interethnic violence, the Huaorani gradually moved into this territory and occupied the banks of the Curaray up to its headwaters (Cabodevilla, 2009). Although the exact chronology of the Huaorani's arrival at the Curaray River is unknown, what seems clear is that during the 18th and 19th centuries this ethnic group expanded throughout the left bank of the Curaray River (Cabodevilla, 1999: 162-163). And with the impact of rubber activity on the local populations, the Curaray River was, from 1930 onwards, practically depopulated of anyone other than these "aucas" (Reeve, 2002: 15)."The extreme violence and brutality of the rubber period in the area diminished after Roger Casement published its reports on the enslaved workforce collecting rubber for the Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC), which had been registered in Britain in 1907 and had a British board of directors and numerous stockholders, but did not disappear. Narváez and Trujillo have listed 15 attacks and deaths involving the Waorani between 1918 and 1949, including nine incidents related to the continued rubber extraction, particularly an infamous rubber hacienda of Carlos Sevilla. Starting in the 1940s, there is an increasing number of violent incidents between Waoranis and the oil exploration operations. In one 1920 incident, a group of Waoranis attacked a rubber expedition of Carlos Sevilla along the Curaray river. In reprisal, 80 Waoranis were killed or kidnapped. The kidnapping and enslavement of indigenous persons was a common feature of the rubber industry in the Amazon at the time.
The rubber era and its brutality has marked the Waorani oral tradition and language, with tales of armed foreigners kidnapping, killing, and committing acts of cannibalism. In fact, in the Waorani language, outsiders are known as (also written cowodi or cuwudi), which also means "cannibal", reflecting the traumatic conflict with outsiders during the 19th and early 20th century over the rubber boom. Today, cowodi is abandoning its negative connotation. "This change in perceptions of the signifier cowudi reveals a process of cultural change among the Huaorani that has allowed tourism, oil, colonization, and NGO activities to take place."
With the end of the rubber boom in the 1930s, "most Waorani did not choose voluntary isolation but instead followed the Runa [Kichwa People], who retreated to the western edges of the rainforest. From there, the Waorani raided Kichwa settlements to steal steel tools and, occasionally, captives. Simultaneously, violence among Waorani families increased." In 1946, people working for the Carlos Sevilla hacienda kidnapped two women of the Moipa group in the Upper Curaray river and, in 1948, they kidnapped four more women of the Moipa group, including Dayuma, who would later become central to the history of the Waorani people.
1950s Missionaries of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) first arrived in Ecuador in 1952 with the objective of evangelizing the Waorani, and eventually met Dayuma in the hacienda. It was there that she was befriended by an American missionary named Rachel Saint, who took interest in learning the Huaorani language, "Huao Terero".
In 1955, the missionaries launched Operation Auca to force contact with the Waorani, with the support of oil companies willing to expand exploration, most notably Royal Dutch Shell and Texaco. On 6 January 1956, a group of Waorani killed five US missionaries of Operation Auca in Playa Palma within Waorani territory, where they had landed and established a temporary base. In 1957, Rachel Saint, whose brother (Nate Saint) was killed in the January 1956 attack, embarked on a tour of the United States together with Dayuma, one of the first contacted Waorani persons, appearing with Billy Graham at Madison Square Garden and on Ralph Edwards' television show This Is Your Life, thus turning the conversion of the Waoranis into a cause célèbre in the United States, increasing donations and support for evangelism efforts in Ecuador.
Subsequently, presence and activity of SIL grew in Ecuador and, in 1968, SIL signed a formal agreement with the Ecuadorian Government to "pacify the savages" and establishing a 1,600 km² "protectorate" in Limoncocha and Tiweno, covering the western part of Waorani territory. It aimed at concentrating and evangelizing the Waorani population, which "triggered profound changes: forced displacement, loss of territory, and a significant decline in their population due to disease." By 1972, most Waorani had been concentrated in Tiweno to be converted, with the groups from the lower Cononaco river, who lived near the Yasuní and Nashiño rivers (nampaweiris, waneiris, baiwairis, kempereiris) remaining.
The Waorani population before the 1950s contact was estimated at at least 600 persons, but contact with the SIL missionaries, oil workers, loggers and other indigenous peoples introduced diseases like influenza, tuberculosis, malaria, and polio, which were deadly for the until then isolated Waorani. Waorani accounts indicate that those remaining in their territory believed it was the SIL missionaries who "poisoned the chicha" and that "God is bad because he let [them] die". In 1969, "a deadly polio epidemic hit the missionary compound [...] immediately following the arrival of the third Waorani group, killing 16 and permanently handicapping many more; several authors argue that SIL was directly responsible for this outbreak due to inadequate vaccinations and sanitation while at the same time concentrating a large population in such a small area." Records indicate that approximately 525 Waoranis were concentrated in the SIL "protectorate", over 80% of their pre-contact population, "confined to a small area, living sedentary, missionary dependent lives."
Resistance to evangelism before 1968 and then to concentration in the "protectorate" was constant, with violent conflict erupting between different groups of the Waorani, attacks against oil workers and against persons of other indigenous peoples living in the area. In 1968, the Waorani leader Tagae and other families separated refused to be displaced to the missionary settlement, and have since lived in voluntary isolation. Today, they are referred to as the Tagaeri, an indigenous group living in voluntary isolation. In 1972 "Waorani leaders like Wiñame and Dabo rebelled and founded new settlements in places like Dayuno."
Facing a decrease in population in the "protectorate" due to death of flight, in 1976, the SIL missionaries called the missionary anthropologist James Yost to "explain the reasons for the failed reduction. Yost recommended dispersing the groups (some clans had already become enemies and left the reserve). He also suggested SIL's withdrawal from Tiweno 'so that the Waorani can decide their own destiny, admitting in 1978 that "if the Waorani were to solve their own problems and remain independent of SIL, they would need to face their problems alone." SIL would then progressively reduce its presence in the "protectorate".
However, the Ecuadorian Government had declared the Waorani territory as vacant and started leasing it to oil companies, in particular Texaco, and handed property right to "colonizers" under the 1977 Law on Colonization of the Amazon Region, causing further conflicts. Faced with dispossession, many Waorani men turned to working for the oil companies or leaving their territory entirely. "By the end of 1979, James Yost counted more than seventy men [in the "protectorate"] (sixty percent of the total) who had worked for oil companies at least once, compared with thirty-three a year earlier and fewer than ten before 1977. Thirteen single girls were working as domestic servants in cities."