Joe Kane

About the author: Joe Kane, an award-winning author and journalist, has been reporting on the Amazon since 1985.

Oil companies are pushing deeper and deeper into the Amazon rain forest in search of oil. In the process, they are polluting the forest, creeks, and rivers with toxic waste and thereby threatening the health, crops, and hunting and fishing lands of the indigenous people who call the forest their home. Due to a lack of legal protections, local tribes have begun to resist the intrusion of oil companies into their territories by means of protests and acts of industrial sabotage.

Deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon rain forest, in a village more than a hundred miles from the nearest road, a young Cofan Indian named Bolivar smiles as he describes the...