With the Help of GPS, Amazonian Tribes Reclaim the Rain Forest (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

With the Help of GPS, Amazonian Tribes Reclaim the Rain Forest

Wired Magazine Issue 15.11
By Andy Isaacson Email 11.06.07 | 12:00 AM
Illustration: Evah Fan
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/15-11/ps_amazon

Wuta is practically naked, except for the red cotton breechcloth strung
around his waist and the yellow beaded necklaces that drape his muscular
torso. In his hands, though, he's holding something that places him firmly
in the 21st century: a new gray Garmin GPS device.

A member of the Trio tribe, he's leading me through the rain forest near his
village in southern Suriname — a two-hour Cessna flight from the closest
road. At the foot of a large tree that dangles a cascade of liana vines,
Wuta points his GPS toward the sky: no signal. He fiddles with a button and
a few minutes later gets a reading. He relays the coordinates to a fellow
Trio cartographer beside him, who dutifully jots them down. Wuta then
tramps on, demonstrating how he and other tribesmen have charted, by foot
and canoe, some 20 million acres of land here at Amazonia's northern
fringe.

To avoid getting steamrollered by developers, ranchers, loggers, miners,
oilmen, and biopirates, tribes across the Amazon Basin have begun acquiring
high tech tools to defend themselves. Much of the help in this effort has
come from the Amazon Conservation Team, a Virginia environmental and
cultural preservation organization, which provided equipment, cartographic
expertise, and financial assistance. Now dozens of men like Wuta are
walking the forests, mapping their lands with the aid of portable GPS
devices.

Of course, just because the tribes have mapped the lands doesn't mean they
control all the legal rights to them. But it's a step in that direction.
Suriname now uses maps generated by the Trio and other groups as official
government documents. In Ecuador, the Shuar tribe, long embroiled in a
struggle with American oil companies, was recently granted title to its
communal lands, as mapped by GPS. The massive sandals-on-the-ground
charting campaign and delineation of once imprecise boundaries have also
given the tribes greater confidence in asserting their interests — in some
instances, natives have driven out illegal miners and have established
settlements and guard posts on their borders.

In addition to GPS mapping, tribes are using Google Earth as a tool for
territorial vigilance. The app's satellite imagery can identify threats —
an encroaching soy farm, say, or a river stained by the runoff from a gold
mine. A few tribes in Brazil with Internet access are marking the
coordinates of surreptitious activity they see in the images, then
investigating on foot or passing the information to government enforcers.

For Wuta, the global positioning device he cradles is a handheld life
insurance policy. "I make maps because I don't want the companies to come —
when they come, maybe the water will be dirty," he says as we walk back from
the forest, across a grassy airstrip that was cleared 40 years ago by
American evangelicals, the first outsiders to want a piece of the land and
its people.

Ultimately, though, this advanced technology may just help the Indians turn
on the forest to enrich themselves. (And who can blame them, really?)
Carrying a carved wooden cane and wearing slacks, a plaid shirt, and a
Casio watch, the Trio's chief hints at this uncertain future when I ask
whether his newfound territorial security makes him more likely to get into
the business of extracting natural resources. Education and technology, he
says, have helped his tribe make more-responsible decisions. He then adds,
"The maps have helped us realize our assets."