Reflections from the meeting of the International Working Group (IWG) of the Social Investment Forum, meeting at the Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico, Nov 2-3, 2007.

“We are all indigenous peoples,” said Larson Bill, a leader of the Western Shoshone. “Some of us have preserved the knowledge longer.” He went on to say that “climate change” hit the first peoples of North America in 1492, with the results of destroyed environment and human lives, forced migrations, and cultural devastation.

Larson believes that some indigenous peoples have preserved enough of the knowledge so that there is still time to share it for the sake of all of us now experiencing climate change.

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Prior to its merger with Chevron in 2001, Texaco was involved in controversial legal proceedings related to its activities in Ecuador between 1969 and 1990. In May 2003, attorneys representing 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorians filed suit against Chevron seeking to collect $1 billion in damages for oil pollution in Ecuadorian forests and rivers 30 years before. The case went to trial in an Ecuadorian court in October 2003, and was pending as of March 2006.

Attorneys for Ecuadorian indigenous peoples appealed a May 2001 decision by a federal judge in New York to dismiss attempts to sue Texaco in U.S. courts. The U.S. courts determined that Ecuador was the appropriate jurisdiction. In August 2002, a U.S. federal appeals court upheld the May 2001 dismissal. Nevertheless, the appeals court ruling allowed that a verdict against the company reached in an Ecuadorian court would be enforced in the U.S. Legal action was originally brought in November 1993 by representatives of Ecuadorian indigenous communities and settlers from eastern Ecuador. The plaintiffs included 100 residents of Ecuador and nearby Peru.

The suit alleged that between 1969 and 1990 the company was responsible for practicing extensive deforestation, depriving local communities of land, contaminating rivers with oil spills and production waste, and polluting the atmosphere by burning off gas. In October 1998, a federal appeals court reinstated the suit against Texaco in a New York federal court after it had been dismissed a first time.

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