May 2, 1994 A REPORTER AT LARGE about a visit by Moi, a Huaorani Indian from the Ecuadorian Amazon, to Washington, D.C., to present the case of his tribe to the U.S. President. It had taken him nearly two weeks to reach Washington. He had written a letter inviting the President to visit the Huaorani. At the White House gate, he gripped the fence, as if testing its strength, and his eyes narrowed in calculation: he went into the Huaorani zone, as writer had come to think of it. He said, “I believe I can climb this fence and reach the front door before the soldiers get me.” Writer dissuaded him. Moi had been brought to Washington by a team of attorneys from the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, which, on behalf of the Huaorani, had filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an arm of the Organization of American States. Over the last twenty years, American oil development in the Oriente–as the Ecuadorian Amazon is known–has proceeded virtually without regulation. Every day, the petroleum industry dumps millions of gallons of untreated toxic pollutants into a watershed extending over 50,000 square miles of rainforest, and it has opened vast stretches of the region to colonization and deforestation. Commercial oil production in the Huaorani territory is expected to begin sometime this year. The Huaorani petition charges that this will be ethnocide, and asks the commission to investigate, but it’s a long shot at best. Tells about Moi’s testimony before the OAS, which author also took part in, and Moi’s being picked up by the military on his return to Ecuador. The OAS was refused permission to investigate the case and Moi was eventually released. Read more http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1994/05/02/1994_05_02_074_TNY_CARDS_000367821#ixzz1iguzD7xM

I am sure the people who wrote this image will be interested to know that on that same year Tropic supported Moi’s vision to create an ecotourism program that would help his community and nation to share with visitors from the world their efforts to preserve their culture and territory. You can visit Moi’s project, luckly meet him at his communities ecolodge called Huaorani Ecolodge, for more details you can visit www.huaorani.com or contact us at info@tropiceco.com