Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at Amazonian people’s mechanisms to improve their livelihood in light of a pro-indigenous government from whom they feel threatened. By agreeing to international infrastructure projects, Bolivian Amazonian groups hope to both expose government exploitation and improve their livelihood.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation looks at Amazonian people's struggles to maintain their livelihood in light of, not as one might think, foreign projects offeringdevelop ment, but instead their own pro-indigenous government from which they see their autonomy and indigeneity appropriated. Bolivian Amazonian groups hope to both improve their livelihood, but also to defend it by exposing what they consider government wrong-doings implemented in the name of decolonization and Andean indigenous cosmologies as Sumak Kawsay. Indeed, Bolivia's President Evo Morales has been accused of hypocrisy by NGOs and indigenous organisations at the recent climate summit in Bolivia for passing energy decrees which open national parks for resource exploitation and for infringing on indigenous communal lands. Tacana and Tsiman/Moseten groups from the Bolivian Amazon experience the government operating in their legal territory without consultation extracting lumber, planning dams and a highway-bridge over the Beni River. As a result they encourage cooperation with international agencies, "so the world can see what he (President Morales) is doing". They see this as an opportunity for improving their livelihoods and maintaining direct control over their natural surroundings. However, this is not necessarily equated with its preservation as defined by the ethno-ecological NGOs and as has been projected onto them with the image of the "ecological Indian". Rather, landscapes are regarded as a compilation of powerful entities represented in cosmological myths of which some are indestructible and others need to be kept in check.