Colombia’s U’wa Indians do not back down, as companies looking for oil near the tribe’s northeastern Colombia cloud-forest home will likely discover soon. From 1995 to 2002, the semi-nomadic U’wa threw down the gauntlet to prevent exploration efforts in the region by Occidental Petroleum. Fearing for their culture and their environment, the 8,000-member tribe manned barricades to prevent access to the drill site, sued in national and international courts and teamed up with U.S. environmental groups to wage a campaign of picketing and protests against Occidental and its largest shareholders. Awash in negative publicity, Occidental in May 2002 ceded its drilling rights near U’wa territory in the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy mountain range to Colombia’s state oil company, Ecopetrol, claiming it had... [Log in to read more]