Pepe Acacho17 (the current vice-president of the CONAIE) and Monica Chuj i explained that nature, as well as rights, are inexact translations of the indigenous vision. Yet the struggle of these communities needed a springboard toward an outside world that would otherwise not listen, and they found this springboard in the translation of Kichwa

of the Amazon. This vision, in Kichwa, is called Sumak Kawsay, translated as 'good living' and signalling the idea of a non-linear and non-progressive kind of development which takes into account community ties and relations to the natural environment.15 The idea of rights , already familiar to