Partnering with Indigenous People to Save the Environment

Interfaith San Ramon Valley
San Ramon, CA

In May 2003, the suffering of an indigenous people half a world away led a group of Californian pastors and rabbis to challenge a huge multinational oil company they believed responsible. The Interfaith San Ramon Valley first became involved with the fate of the Cofan people when three members of the indigenous nation traveled from the Ecuadorian Amazon to the headquarters of ChevronTexaco in California’s San Ramon Valley, hoping to meet with the company’s chairman, David O’Reilly. They wanted to explain to him the amount of environmental and human devastation left in the wake of the company’s 20 years of oil exploration, drilling and pipeline development in the Amazonian region known as the Oriente that had turned a pristine ecosphere into a toxic wasteland where the water and rain are made undrinkable with oil and industrial byproducts, the land is made barren and babies are frequently born with missing organs, and more than 90 percent of local families have suffered various cancers unknown in the area just 20 years before.

Unsurprisingly, ChevronTexaco -- which was facing a multi-billion dollar lawsuit over the claims -- wouldn’t meet with the Cofan delegation. But when they wouldn’t listen, members of Interfaith San Ramon Valley did, setting up meetings between the Cofan and their own congregations, so that members of their faith communities could hear the Cofan’s stories and learn about the far-away destruction that could be traced back to a company in their own town.

In appreciation of their audience with Interfaith San Ramon Valley (ISRV) congregations, the Cofan invited ISRV to form their own delegation and travel to Ecuador to see the destruction for themselves. That November, three ISRV members from Danville -- Rev. Steve Harms and Rev. Margareta Dahlin-Johansson from Peace Lutheran Church, and Rabbi Dan Goldblatt from Beth Chaim Congregation -- as well as John Dalymple, the Secretary of the Central Labor Conference of Contra Costa County AFL-CIO and the labor representative of the oil workers of ChevronTexaco in Richmond, California, took them up on the offer and traveled to Ecuador’s capital, Quito, under the guidance of the group, Amazon Watch.

In Quito, the ISRV delegation met with faith communities and union leaders and the press to discuss their mission. They spent three days observing the untouched beauty of healthy Amazon rainforests, before moving into the “toxic tour” of the Oriente, where an estimated 19 billion gallons of waste water and 16.8 million gallons of crude oil were left in the wake of the company’s pullout in 1992: half again as much as was spilled by the Exxon Valdez.

The ISRV delegation was horrified, but vowed to share their experiences. Upon their return to San Ramon, they more than kept their word, authoring a three-part diary of their journey that was published in local papers, holding numerous press conferences, making a video documentary in partnership with Amazon Watch, and hosting a series of “report-backs” with the Bay Area community.