A federation of Kukama Indigenous women in Peru is waging a legal battle against threats to the natural world. In a lawsuit filed in September, the group, Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana, demanded that the Peruvian government recognize the legal rights of nature by granting the Marañón River the right to exist, flow, and “live free from contamination.”
The lawsuit follows decades of pollution from a long list of foreign oil companies. Over the years, oil spills and drilling in the Amazon Rainforest have degraded the Marañón River’s ecosystem and harmed its fisheries, jeopardizing one of the Kukama’s main sources of food, water, and transportation.
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