The article analyses two delegated governance projects carried out in Ecuador's Amazonian south-east in the twentieth century. In collaboration with the military and public institutions, two Catholic missions, the Salesian and the Franciscan, were central actors in the colonising of an area inhabited by the Shuar. Considering the wider historical and ethnographic regional context and focusing on practices of cultural translation and territorial politics, I discuss the two missions’ divergent governance sensitivities vis-à-vis the Shuar. ‘Governance sensitivities’ refers in this context to the colonial actors’ capability to recognise colonised subjects as culturally distinct. I combine new empirical material from the historical archive of the Franciscans in Zamora with secondary sources in order to analyse how differences between the two missions’ sensitivity and insensitivity to Shuar otherness became especially prevalent in the 1960s and 70s. The divergent ways the Salesians and Franciscans perceived the Shuar colonial subject had consequences for how they engaged in the protection of Shuar land and for how they contributed to facilitating or holding back indigenous political organisation.

Although hunting is still critical to the subsistence of many people throughout Amazonia, this practice may not be sustainable under current socio-economic conditions. Native societies are rapidly undergoing socio-economic changes that exacerbate the pressure on wildlife and habitats, indicating the urgent need to assess the impacts of subsistence hunting. In a 12-month study we assessed hunting patterns in four Shuar native communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Hunting patterns and impact of hunting activities were documented using interviews, direct observations, self-monitoring records, community landscape mapping and mammal surveys. Although Shuar harvest a wide-range of wildlife species, including insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals we only report information about mammals. A total of 3,181 individuals (c. 26,000 kg) of 21 mammal species were hunted during the 12 months. We used three algorithms for assessing the sustainability of hunting: the production, stock-recruitment and harvest models. Of the 21 mammal species hunted there were sufficient data to assess 15, 12 of which were hunted above maximum sustainable levels within the 243 km2 hunting catchment area. The immediate need to conserve wildlife populations is not obvious to Shuar hunters who still enjoy what they perceive to be an inexhaustible source of wild meat. In this context management of Shuar hunting practices to control harvest levels is complex. The assessment presented here is the first step of what needs to be a long-term wildlife management process.