ETHNIC GROUPS IN THIS TERRITORY: ​

The Bora Ethnic Group; are an indigenous tribe of the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon, located between the Putumayo and Napo rivers. The Bora speak a Hitotan language and comprise approximately 2,000 people. In the last forty years, they have become largely settled people living mostly in permanent forest settlements. In the animist Bora worldview, there is no distinction between the physical and spiritual worlds and spirits are present throughout the world. Bora families practice exogamy. The Bora has an elaborate knowledge of the plant life of the surrounding rainforest. Like other indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon, such as the Urarina plants, especially trees, hold a complex and important interest for the Bora. The Bora have guarded their lands against both indigenous foes and outsider colonials. Around the time of the 20th century, the rubber boom had a devastating impact on the Boras. A book that recorded the mistreatment of the Boras during that time period is "The Putumayo; The Devil's Paradise" which was published in 1912 and written by W.E. Hardenburg. The tribe's ancestral lands are currently threatened by illegal logging practices. The Bora has no indigenous reserves.

The Huitoto Ethnic Group; were once composed of 100 villages or 31 tribes, but disease and conflict have reduced their numbers. In the early 20th century, the Witoto population was 50,000. The rubber boom in the mid-20th century brought diseases and displacement to the Witotos, causing their numbers to plummet to 7,000–10,000. Since the 1990s, cattle ranchers have invaded Witoto lands, depleted the soil, and polluted the waterways. In response to the incursions, some governments established several reservations for Witotos, one almost remote one is located at the Ampiyacu not too far from the Bora Indigenous tribe. Huitoto people practice swidden or slash-and-burn agriculture. To prevent depleting the land, they relocate their fields every few yields. Major crops include cacao, coca, maize, bitter and sweet manioc, bananas, mangoes, palms, peanuts, pineapples, plantains, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, tobacco, and yams. Ethnobotanists have studied Witoto agriculture due to its efficiency and sustainability. Huitoto men hunt with blowguns and shotguns.

The Ocaina Ethnic Group; are an ethnic group of the Amazon that inhabit the banks of the Yaguasyacu, Ampiyacu, jamayacù, Putumayo, and Algodon rivers (in Peru); Although they are known as ocaina, they call themselves Dyo'xaiya or Ivo'tsa. Ocaine language found within the Huitoto linguistic family. Bora-witotoque language family includes besides the ocainas, nonuñas, uitotos, muninanes and bora-mirañas, among others. The Ocainas share history and many cultural characteristics with the Huitotos, Resígaros, and Andoques. These groups inhabited the southern tip of Colombia and were brought to Peruvian territory by the bosses during the Amazon rubber boom. The violence infringed by the bosses descended their population and they are currently in the process of assimilation into the Huitotos.

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The Yaguas Ethnic Group; is estimated that there are some 6,000 Yagua living in north-eastern Peru and southern Colombia, in 30 communities along the Amazon, Napo, Putumayo, and Yavari rivers, and their tributaries. This makes it one of the larger indigenous communities in Amazonia, and this is reflected in the name of the recently-created Yaguas National Park in the Department of Loreto. Currently, the Yagua live in some 30 communities scattered throughout a section of the Peruvian and Colombian Amazon basin which can roughly be described as a rectangle 200 miles wide and 350 miles long (70,000 sq. miles) extending southward from the second to the fifth parallel and westward from the 70th to the 75th meridian west.

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