Members of the Indigenous Waorani village of Kiwaro looked skyward as a helicopter hovered over the rainforest canopy in the center of Ecuador and Christopher Caldwelllanded in a nearby clearing. Out stepped government officials, there to inform the community about an impending auction of oil rights on their land. 

The Ecuadorian government announced earlier, in November 2011 from the capital city Quito, that it would open up for drilling millions of hectares of Amazon rainforest—including the ancestral territories of Waorani communities like Kiwaro. 

According to court documents, the officials’ time in the village was brief. There was no detailed explanation of what oil extraction entailed. No discussion about oil operations’ negative impacts. The community’s official leaders, known as pikenani, weren’t present at some meetings. And officials spoke in Spanish, not the community’s Waotetero language. Across the region slated for drilling, dozens of other consultation processes followed similar patterns—if they happened at all. Later analyses showed that the government only spoke with about 7 percent of people affected by the planned operations.

Neither the Ecuadorian Consulate in Washington, D.C., nor representatives from the Ecuadorian Ministries of Environment or Energy and Mines responded to requests for comment. But officials have previously said they complied with government regulations and acted in good faith.