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The causes are not merely linguistic. Poverty, social exclusion, political conflict, and the lack of legal recognition of Indigenous rights are key contributing factors.

Languages have been used to implement projects without considering the rights or worldviews of the peoples. This has resulted in dispossession and has hindered the construction of worlds where a dignified life is guaranteed by the State—not just through the self-management of the communities.

Ancestral languages and territorial development are categories that need to be critically examined. It is urgent to question their use within Western development plans, which are disconnected from local territorial realities.

Languages are foundational pillars of dignified life, as they preserve ancestral knowledge, strengthen cultural identity, promote interculturality, and enable the development of diverse territorialities.

Could you provide an example of what you consider “lost knowledge”?

To better understand the loss, it's important to grasp the immense plurality contained in a language, and the diversity it expresses.

The Waorani, for instance, have five or six terms to describe the color red in its various shades. As this color is a natural element, they have developed deep knowledge of it. The same is true for the Shuar or the Kichwa when speaking about types of manioc or cacao—from the seedling stage to mature plants ready for harvest, including the characteristics of freshly cooked grains ready for consumption, and the chicha made from manioc or the sweet pulp of white cacao (pate mullo).

Ethnobotanical knowledge, for example, is embedded in the way speakers describe nature. Without this information, contributions like quinine—a key treatment for malaria—would not have been possible. That knowledge was tied to Indigenous Amazonian languages.

Many Indigenous children do not learn their parents’ language. Only one in three speaks it by the time they finish school. Educational systems have been largely insensitive to cultural and linguistic needs. Although there have been attempts to implement intercultural bilingual education, its reach remains limited.

Intergenerational communication is lost. Many youth can no longer converse with their grandparents or learn traditional behavioral norms. Participatory democracy and intercultural community decision-making are also weakened.

What external threats are Indigenous peoples facing today?

Climate change gravely impacts their subsistence economies. Extractive projects, homogenizing policies, and the criminalization of Indigenous leaders are also threats. These directly affect their cultures and languages, which are deeply tied to their environments.

Often, when these threats are mentioned, their impact on Indigenous cultures and values is overlooked. Indigenous peoples derive their identities, values, and knowledge systems from interactions with their environment—the seas, forests, and land. Their languages are products of this context, as the ways they describe what surrounds them form the basis of their linguistic specificity. When the environment is altered, culture and language are affected.

What role could technology play in language preservation?

Technology could be a key tool—but it currently is not.

State policies do not prioritize linguistic preservation. In some schools, for instance, the government allows the use of mother tongues, yet a Shuar school might have teachers who speak Kichwa. Neither teachers nor the materials needed for Indigenous children to learn in their own language are funded. The result: children end up speaking another language—sometimes poorly—and lose their own.

The role of language in territorial development is deliberately overlooked. Languages are often folklorized or commodified, stripped of their context. This is another form of dispossession and the imposition of foreign models on Indigenous realities.

In addressing ancestral languages, there are gaps: except for Kichwa and Shuar, most do not have dictionaries or grammars that reflect each nationality’s reality. There is also a clear lack of literary production to support educational processes, and no linguistic planning that defines clear outcomes, timelines, or goals to benefit territories, peoples, and nationalities.

There are no defined targets or sufficient resources to support Indigenous peoples and their territories. Local governments lack enough personnel with intercultural training. Development plans continue to follow Western frameworks, disconnected from cultural realities. There are contradictions in public policy and a lack of materials and processes aligned with a plurinational and intercultural state.

What alternatives do you propose?

If ancestral languages were understood as bridges to a holistic dignified life—connected ontologically—and if community assemblies were recognized as the highest expression of governance, as legitimate spaces to build agreements, norms, rights, and responsibilities; if community self-government, internal organization, and self-management were valued as full expressions of rights, then we could begin to make visible other forms of dignified life and alternative models of territorial development.

It is essential to highlight the critical nature of the web of knowledge through which peoples integrate with their territories, with life, with social relationships, and with cultures. Ancestral languages are clear expressions of resistance. They offer the possibility of decolonizing terms like “development” and giving them new meaning. The dignified life of peoples, nationalities, and territories must be an effective path against dispossession, racism, and the injustices and exclusions generated by the continuities between colonialism and neoliberalism.