

The same industry currently destroying the planet is what has driven the A’i of the Colombian Amazon to the brink of extinction. It unleashed the dispossession, deforestation, and depredation of the A’i territories, and with that, the degradation of their way of life. Social conflict, rampant criminality, violence, and war surrounded their ever-dwindling numbers, and their unity and governance was afflicted from within. Underlying these ills was a profound contempt for A’i indigenous identity which translated into the violation of their human rights, a state of affairs that continues to this day and marches the A’i towards extinction.