Panel discussion: Intangible Proof

‘Intangible Proof – Indigenous Truths before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’
Panel discussion on the current exhibition by Nina Valerie Kolowratnik with:

• Nina Valerie Kolowratnik
  Architect and Ph.D. Candidate in Law

• René Kuppe
  Professor at the Department of Legal Philosophy, University of Vienna

• Christina Korak
  Postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Translation Studies, University of Graz

• Eduardo Pichilingue
  Specialist in Peoples in Voluntary Isolation and Coordinator of Cuencas Sagradas, Peru

The Tagaeri Taromenane are among the last indigenous peoples remaining in isolation in the Ecuadorian Amazon without contact with the majority population. Their survival is intrinsically linked to a healthy forest. In recent years however the expansion of oil extraction and logging activities in their territory has led to the drastic reduction of lived space. Three massacres against the Tagaeri and Taromenane (in the years 2003, 2006, and 2013) and the failure of the state of Ecuador to protect these people are now the focus of a legal case against Ecuador carried out before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The judgment will be the first by the Court to concern indigenous peoples in isolation. While the victims remain as an isolated community those who brought the case to court are faced with the incredibly difficult task of procuring evidence in their absence.

The roundtable is organised in the framework of the exhibition Intangible Proof – Indigenous Truths before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and brings together legal scholar Prof. René Kuppe, translational studies scholar Dr. Christina Korak, specialist in Peoples in Voluntary Isolation and coordinator of Cuencas Sagradas Perú Eduardo Pichilingue, and architect and Ph.D. candidate in Law Nina Valerie Kolowratnik to discuss the challenges of translating Indigenous lived realities and cosmovisions into legal evidence and, in the particular case of the Tagaeri Taromenane peoples in isolation, how to proof the intangible.