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1. This referendum called the Yasuní-ITT Initiative was enacted in 2007, and by 2009 pledges of support from around the world came to around 1.7 billion dollars. The money pledged insured that it would be possible to fund the initiative, with support from the international community.

2. Historically the Waorani, a semi-nomadic group of hunter-gatheres, have lived in the Yasuní National Park for centuries. However, after the introduction of Royal-Dutch-Shell workers in 1930 that lead missionaries to this land, the the only remaining part of the Wanorani are the Tagaeri and the Taromenane. As oil mongers continued to come into their land as the years went on, the Waorani established the "Organization of Waorani Nationalities of Ecuador" (ONHAE) to expand their rights. The ONHAE requested that the government of Ecuador grant the Waorani legal title over their territory. They wanted control over their land so that they could bring the harmful oil exploitation in their land to a halt. However the government saw the Waorani opposition to oil activites as harmful to the modernization of Ecuador. Oil companies used the justification that Ecuador's development was dependent on oil extraction to further their projects. However, as oil companies like Maxus continued to build roads to aid in their extraction efforts the Waorani claimed that the company was "destroying everything in their path: our culture, our territory, and our lives." Their cry for help in the form of an "oil moratorium" gained the attention of NGOs concerned with the biodiversity of the rainforest, and it led to the Amazonia por la Vida (Amazon for Life), which brought environmental problems in the Amazon to the forefront of the media. This began the open discourse between the Waorani against oil activties in their land. Before an oil exploitation began, however, the Ecuadorian government enacted the doctrine of terra nullius, a racist doctrine that provided legal justification for Europeans to annex territories that were inhabited by indigenous people. The terra nullius asserted legal and political rule over the indigenous, and gave them no property or political rights. It claimed that they were "savages" who could not exercise political power over their land. Thus, the land was claimed by Europeans who exercised control over the indigenous populations and began oil extraction without consent or compensation to the local peoples. In the early 1960s oil companies ignored local land rights, failed to mitigate pollution/damage to the Amazon, and allowed for the process of colonization of the Amazon to begin. All of these issues combined stripped indigenous people of large areas of their territory and endangered their cultural and economic way of life. In their opposition, local residents sought to participate fully in discussions with multi-national oil companies and national governments on the issue. While this discourse did not blossom fully in the 1960s, by the 1990s the political pressure that oil companies faced completely changed the way things were done. Oil companies and governments now had to pay attention to the social and environmental impacts of extraction and long-term interests of local communities. A middle ground between the Waorani way of life and governmental and oil company's interests was created. To create this middle ground the Waorani learned new languages, traveled to the United States, met with industry and government officials, created new indigenous federations and political practices, engaged with international science, and modified long-standing social and economical practices. Through these actions a discourse was created, leaving the old one-sided exploitation of the indigenous lands in the past. Although the Waorani still did not have complete control of their land and their destiny, the middle ground had given them some influence over their fate. The native people also sought employment in the oil industry, access to oil markets, and long-term investment in health centers, schools, and community development. However, they struggled to establish good conditions for new projects, such as monitoring environmental pollution, establishment of clear land rights, and sharing of the profits from oil development. By ignoring the wants and needs of the native people, oil companies forced them to turn to political resistance as the only way to make themselves heard. In the 1970s native groups wanted to incorporate concern for damage of the Amazon into the planning and execution of development projects. They also sought local control over development projects as a way to incorporate sustainable practices in their land. These concerns were given little attention until the 1980s when the government began to recognize native land claims. Town-meetings held by the Waorani were run in a consensus style, and although this is a different practice compared to the rest of the world, national governments recognized these meetings as legitimate political proceedings. While there is still much that needs to be done in the way of sustainable oil extraction, the discourse between the local population in the Ecuadorian Amazon has increased dramatically giving them a voice and a say in what happens to their land. As their influence rose the Waorani were able to stop exploration in two leased oil blocks in Ecuador. They also pushed the government in 2007 to prohibit oil, gas, and logging activities in the "Zona Intangible," comprised of 7,580 km of Waorani land. The grounds for this movement included not only contaminations of the Waorani land in the Amazon, but also the diseases, that were decimating the Waorani population, brought in by persons from the developed world. In a lawsuit against Texaco, lawyers pointed to the actual loss of money by oil companies after oil exploitation to prove that sustainable practices on the front end would benefit the company and the land. In the 1980s the average income per barrel of oil was five dollars, while the cost of reparations for the land were more than six dollars per barrel. The six dollars only covered local damages, it did not account for climate change and costs of carbon dioxide production, which also required payment for. These figures prove that indigenous concerns for the land are not only beneficial to the land, but also cost effective. The story-line about respecting and preserving the land of the "last free people" is the corner-stone of the ever changing discourse underlining the Yasuní-ITT project, and is used every time human rights activists claim that isolated groups are affected by new oil activities.