Ese' ejja

 

The Ese' Ejja indigenous people of Boliva and Peru live in the Amazon Basin region. Their name for the Heath is the Sonene River. An Ese Ejja Village, called Sonene Village, lies at the mouth of the Heath as it enters into the Madre Di Dios River. Ese Ejja live in Bolivia along the Beni and the Madre de Dios Rivers. In Peru, they live along the Heath and Tambopata Rivers. Ese Ejja people are hunter-gathers, farmers, rangers and fishermen. Their name derives from their autonym, Ece’je, which means “true people.” They are also known as the Chama, Tatinawa, Huarayo, Guarayo, Chuncho, Huanayo, Kinaki, and Mohino.

 

The Ese' Ejja are an indigenous people of Bolivia and Peru, in the southwestern Amazon. 1,300 Ese Ejja live in Boliia, in the Pando and Beni Departments,[2] in the foothills along the Beni and the Madre de Dios Rivers. In Peru, they live along the Tambopata and Heath Rivers, near Puerto Maldonado.

 

The Ese’ejja live in the Heath/Tambopata region of south east Peru and Madidi/Madre de Dios in Bolivia. 60 years ago there were around 15,000 Ese’eja in Tambopata, but today there are just a few hundred, as diseases introduced by foreigners and the decimation of the rubber boom have taken a heavy toll. The largest Ese’eja population is found in Bolivia.

 

The Ese’ejja have retained their traditional use of rainforest resources, but these have evolved significantly from the ways of their ancestors. The Ese’ejja were originally nomadic – they are wonderful river navigators, and would move their settlements along the rainforest rivers, never depleting resources in any one location. Their traditional hunting methods have also evolved, with bows and arrows and (for fishing) harpoons being largely replaced by shotguns and fishing lines. 

 

However, the Ese’eja are working hard to conserve their environment and traditions, and now own or are active in running a number of eco-lodges and conservation centres. They have always used plants from the forests for medicinal purposes but in recent years that tradition was in danger of not being passed on to younger generations. While the benefits of western medicine were not in doubt, a programme to address the potential demise of the Ese’eja’s plant medicines was set in place. As a result, a book, recording the traditional medicines and their uses has been produced and given to all the Ese’eja in Peru and Bolivia. And in Infierno the Ese’eja maintain a witchdoctor’s garden, with over 180 different species of plants.

In addition to subsistence agriculture, the Ese’eja sell the brazil nuts that they collect in the rainforest, and some of them travel up river to hunt, fish and collect turtle eggs. The rainforest also provides the Ese’eja with materials for their crafts – they make baskets, hats, bows and arrows, fans and hammocks – and the wood and palm thatch for their houses.

 

The Ese´eja ethnic group belongs to the Tacana language family, and has traditionally inhabited the Tambopata, Heath, Beni and Madidi river basins in Perú and Bolivia. In 1948, the Ese´eja population was estimated to be 15,000 individuals. Presently, the Ese´eja Community of Infierno, on the Tambopata River has around 400 members, and although other Ese´eja communities exist along the Heath river, a drastic decrease in the population has occurred due to diseases introduced by foreigners and to the atrocities committed during the rubber boom.

 

The Ese´eja are superb river navigators, who traditionally shifted their settlements along the banks of the rivers in their territory, managing to travel up to the headwaters. Thus, Ese´ejas spread the intensity of resource use throughout a territory of millions of hectares, without permanently affecting any particular site: a sustainable use of forest resources. The Ese´eja cosmology holds that humans may live in harmony with nature.           

 

Presently, families of the Ese’eja Native Community combine their traditional use of forest resources with some occidental influences to produce a lifestyle that is noticeably different from their ancestral ways, as well as from those of other rain forest residents (mestizos, Andean immigrants, etc). Their principal activity is subsistence agriculture, but they combine this with a wide variety of complimentary practices. Brazil nut gathering is important, as the community’s forests harbor dense Brazil nut tree stands. Most of what is gathered is sold, along with surplus crops. Traces of their migratory habits are still present: small number of Ese’eja navigate up the Tambopata river during the dry season to hunt large vertebrates within the reserve, to fish and to collect beach-nesting turtle eggs. Other edible products they gather from the forest include fruits, fungi, bird eggs, honey, and larvae. They also use forest fibers, barks and seeds for their crafts: fans, palm thatches, baskets, hammocks, hats, bows, arrows, spools, and collars. Hunting was traditionally done with bow and arrow, techniques that are now secondary to the shotgun. Likewise, fishing with bow and arrows and harpoons has been partially replaced with line fishing. Both these techniques, plus their now permanent settlements have diminished the large mammal, bird and fish densities and made it difficult for Ese´ejas to maintain their traditional lifestyles.

 

The Ese’Eja believe they climbed down to Earth from a cotton thread in the sky. The elders in their community point out the exact spot in the forest of this legendary descent. A traditionally nomadic community, the Ese’Eja have a long history that demonstrates a spiritual connection with the Amazon. Their nomadic lifestyle began to change in the late 19th century when rubber was discovered and rubber tappers created permanent settlements in the Amazonian region. The Ese’Eja hunter-gatherer way of life was further disrupted with the arrival of missionaries from the 1910s to 1930s. Ese’Eja children were taken away from their families to live in mission schools in Puerto Maldonado. Permanent settlement initiatives of the Ese’Eja people continued when the Peruvian military government of Velasco introduced indigenous peoples land rights reform in the early 1970s giving land titles to individual communities. However, the title and actual acreage was only a small percentage of the Ese’Eja original ancestral home range. These newly demarcated boundaries limited and even excluded Ese’Eja access to sacred sites and many of the traditional hunting, fishing, and gathering areas that they relied on before the land reform policies of the 1970s.

To this day, the Ese’Eja have limited access to their ancestral lands due to land rights battles with the Peruvian government. Mining operations pollute their waters and logging operations deplete their forests. These extraction practices have culminated in a devastating loss of wildlife populations and biodiversity. As a result, younger generations of Ese’Eja have limited opportunities to experience the traditions of their elders.

Facing a range of challenges, the Ese’Eja community is taking steps to protect their history and preserve their natural resources. In the words of Carlos Dejaviso Poje, president of the Ese’Eja Nation: “I worry most about losing the indigenous knowledge of our people. It would be a cultural genocide if we lost our customs and we didn’t know how to value what our ancestors valued.”

 

In the words of one Ese’Eja elder, Mateo Viaeja, “We are the ancient owners of this land because we were the first to come down from the sky. Without the forest, there is no life… and no Ese’Eja.”