Since the Spanish conquest, Amazonian societies have been obliged to gradually institutionalize their choices of life and their cultural expressions in order to achieve autonomy and freedom. A claim of the right of "becoming" indigenous (i.e. “Our right of being different”), a request for living in dignity, to defend their livelihoods and ensure their persistence as distinct cultural entities:
“And us, as First Nations, we have been forced to define, establish boundaries and give names to a lot of things that are part of our lives, such as Nature itself, with the ultimate end of safeguarding what by inheritance belongs to us” (People of the Midday Sun)
“And us, as First Nations, we have been forced to define, establish boundaries and give names to a lot of things that are part of our lives, such as Nature itself, with the ultimate end of safeguarding what by inheritance belongs to us” (People of the Midday Sun)