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Afterlives of Oil: Leadership of Repair in Fluid Landscapes

Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0002-9847-1745

Abstract / Resumen / Resumo

This paper chronicles the emergence of a new generation of indigenous leaders in the oil-producing region of northeastern Ecuador. Over the span of almost half a century, oil exploitation and toxic waste has come to mark the landscape, everyday lives and political relations among the Siekopai people. A new generation of leaders has tacitly accepted that they will not see monetary reparations, but have to make do in a transformed landscape of leaky substances. They are entangled in oil’s material afterlife, and I show how new political subjectivities arise with experiences of living with destruction to the best of their abilities. They take inspiration from shamanic practices of repair and controlled transformation to ensure existential continuity and recompose relations between forests, bodies and territories.

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