Along the winding Bobonaza River in Ecuador’s Pastaza province, the Kichwa families of Pakayaku live at the crossroads of ancient tradition and modern pressure. On October 24, 2025, their story—one of resilience, adaptation, and global consequence—stands as a vivid illustration of the world’s shifting relationship with the land beneath our feet.
Pakayaku’s people patrol and protect seventy-one thousand hectares of rainforest, an expanse mapped by hand, protected by law, and—perhaps most importantly—defended by will. Their titled territory officially covers forty thousand hectares, but their lived homeland, defined by hunting trails, sacred sites, and memory, spans nearly double that. The village is reachable only by canoe, an hour and a half upriver from the port of Canelos—its remoteness a shield and a strategy.
At the heart of Pakayaku’s defense is a remarkable force: the Hurihuri guardian corps, a network of forty-five armed women led by Captain Gracia Malaver. These women, trained with palm-wood spears, carry forward the teachings of grandmothers who once hid their families from slavers and soldiers. As Malaver told Mongabay, “We come from a warrior clan. When you are on the frontlines, you don’t feel fear. The fear leaves you.” Sixteen are active at any given moment, while the rest—her “sleeping jaguars”—stand ready if danger stirs.
The rules are clear: strangers entering without consent are reported and detained until they agree to respect Pakayaku’s law. Olger Manya, a father of seven and veteran of the men’s guard, explained, “This is the system our ancestors designed, and we keep it alive.” The community’s cartographer, Sacha Gayas, puts it simply: “We are the hidden people. No government, no oil or mining company has been able to enter our territory. We move like mist; they never know when we are watching.”
Yet, Pakayaku’s isolation is no longer the impenetrable barrier it once was. Ecuador’s Amazon is under siege. According to Mongabay, illegal mining has doubled since 2020, with mining expanding by five hundred hectares in Napo province in a single year. Organized crime groups such as Los Lobos now control operations from Napo to Zamora. “They protect the ecosystem because it’s their only means of survival,” said Basilio Suárez, a technician from the Morete Cocha community. “They prohibit loggers and oil companies from entering—because if the forest falls, they fall.”
National policies are shifting, too. President Daniel Noboa is pushing for new highways to facilitate oil and gas extraction, including a proposed superhighway that would cut through Pakayaku land. The government has also reopened Ecuador’s mining registry after seven years, inviting new foreign investment under the watchful eye of the International Monetary Fund, which ties loans to economic growth. As Zenaida Yasacama, Pakayaku native and the first woman to serve as vice president of Ecuador’s largest Indigenous organization, CONAIE, puts it, “We want to show ourselves to the world as people who always fight for their rights.”
Pakayaku’s territory has so far escaped concessions, with the last recorded incursion attempt by Argentina’s Compañía General de Combustibles dating back to 2000. Still, the pressure is mounting. President Ángel Santi, who earns no salary and pays for legal trips by selling yuca and plantain, faces daily threats for protesting or joining strikes. “When we have to go to the city for paperwork, we pay everything ourselves. Nobody helps us,” he shared. His greatest fear is not violence, but fatigue—endless administrative hurdles, creeping roads, and tightening laws that chip away at the autonomy Pakayaku has fiercely guarded for half a century.
While Pakayaku’s struggle unfolds in the heart of the Amazon, a parallel drama is playing out on the global stage. On the same date, McKinsey & Company released its Global Materials Perspective 2025, outlining seismic shifts in the world’s materials industry through 2030 and 2035. More than half of the anticipated growth in materials demand over the next decade is tied to the energy transition and digitalization. Copper, lithium, nickel, graphite, and rare earths—minerals found in abundance in South America—are now the linchpins of a new industrial era.
The materials industry is being reshaped by both opportunity and challenge. In 2024, industry revenues contracted by 6% to US$3 trillion, largely due to falling coal and steel prices. Yet, gold, copper, and aluminum maintained healthy margins, and global profitability stood at US$700 billion. Since 2015, shareholder returns have grown 3.5 times. But supply is becoming increasingly concentrated, with resource nationalism on the rise: Indonesia, Zambia, and Gabon have all imposed export restrictions to promote local development. Meeting global demand by 2035 will require an eye-watering US$4.7 trillion in investment and an additional 270 gigawatts of energy capacity.
Demand for lithium is expected to grow at an astonishing 14% per year, followed by nickel (5%), rare earths (6%), cobalt (4%), and copper (2%). South America—home to Pakayaku and countless other Indigenous communities—is emerging as a key region for diversifying global supply chains. Chile, Argentina, Peru, and Brazil are all pivotal players. The so-called Lithium Triangle (Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile) could supply up to 25% of global lithium by 2030, with Argentina’s direct lithium extraction (DLE) potential drawing particular interest from investors.
But the path forward is fraught with difficulty. Mining faces rising costs from lower ore grades, higher labor expenses, and stricter environmental requirements. Production costs are expected to climb well into the mid-2030s. The talent pipeline is shrinking, too: between 2011 and 2021, mining graduates fell by 75% in Australia and 40% in the U.S. By 2035, the industry will need 350,000 new professionals, especially in geology, metallurgy, and automation.
Sustainability efforts, while present, are struggling to keep pace. One-third of green steel projects in Europe have been suspended, and global thermal coal production hit a record 8 gigatons in 2024. Decarbonization is driven more by regulation than by market incentives, and recycling or circular economy models are gaining traction only gradually. McKinsey’s report argues that the most successful sustainability strategies will be those that are scalable and cost-effective, not reliant on subsidies or green premiums.
For Pakayaku, development takes a different shape. Their six-year “plan of life,” drafted collectively, sets rules for education, land use, and future income. It includes a proposal to plant 250,000 cacao trees, intertwined with fruit and native plants, to sustain 250 families. “We want to break away from the model the government imposes,” Gayas explained. “We want our children to learn our own way, connected to this land.” Governance here is consensus-based: twenty-two council members, including the guards, must approve any major step, with equality between men and women enshrined in their rules.
As global demand for minerals intensifies, the world’s gaze turns ever more closely to regions like Ecuador’s Amazon. Pakayaku’s leaders know their survival now depends on visibility as much as invisibility. “We are looking for allies—people who understand that what we protect belongs to all humanity,” Santi told Mongabay. Their story is a reminder that the future of mining, materials, and the planet itself hinges not only on investment and innovation, but on the wisdom and will of those who have guarded these lands for generations.
As the sun sets over Pakayaku and the Bobonaza River carries its stories toward the Andes, the community’s patrols continue at dawn. Their invisibility is not retreat—it is strategy. And for now, it is working.