Yutsu Maiche

Shuar Communicator, Filmmaker, and Musician · Lanceros Digitales · company speakers →

Yutsu Maiche is a Shuar communicator, aspiring filmmaker, and musician from the Shuar Nation (Ecuador). At 22 years old, he has turned film, communication, and music into tools for territorial defense against the advance of mining and oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Since 2021, Maiche has worked for the community media outlet Lanceros Digitales and is an active member of the collectives Lluvia Comunicación and MULLU.TV, through which he highlights attacks on indigenous peoples and violations of the right to nature. His on-the-ground journalistic work has led to two physical attacks against him, the most serious of which occurred on April 12, 2024, when he was attacked while broadcasting from the headquarters of the Shuar Federation, suffering a head wound that required stitches after being stripped of his equipment. Funda Medios and other human rights organizations have recognized his case as an example of high-risk journalism. In 2024, he was selected for the first cohort of Mongabay Latam’s “Indigenous Perspectives from the Ecuadorian Amazon” fellowship, where he produced four reports on the criminalization of defenders and mining conflicts in Shuar territory. He has also been a speaker at FLACSO Ecuador and the Futuro Líquido series, and is a co-founder of the MULLU.TV collective, which is internationally recognized among Indigenous filmmakers in Latin America. He leads Kutukú, an Amazonian band that uses music as a form of resistance and to educate the local community. The band’s name evokes the mountain range that symbolizes the Shuar struggle, and its songs convey messages of conservation and opposition to mining, which gained momentum during the 2023 Referendum, in which oil drilling and metal mining were banned in sensitive areas. He is currently studying film and training new generations of communicators from within the territory, convinced that words, images, and sound are weapons to defend life.

Is this you? Claim this profile →