Among the Tukano an indigenous peoples there is a ritual that reflects refined ecological management: ""The March of the Manikins"". By understanding this and similar cultural practices, we could attempt the re-definition of ""sustainability"" concept. A fundamental part of the process for the appropriation of a new meta-language that could set up new patterns for environmental management practices and policy delivering.

This paper summarises the views of outsiders with respect to indigenous forest management. The information on foreign perspectives was collected between May and December of 2001 through an on-line survey. It is argued that even the most knowledgeable people in the industrialised world have no precise idea of how ‘vulnerable’ rainforest is and few have accurate knowledge about the political conditions facing indigenous peoples or other human inhabitants of the Amazonian rainforest. It is signalled that conservationists, armed groups, governmental officers, churches and NGOs are used to attach themselves to certain narratives, be them hegemonic/managerial or counter-hegemonic/populist, aiming to make alliances and enhance their own power. However, the paper calls the attention on the fact that the responses analysed seem to indicate that a large group of people is unhappy with the assumptions behind either populists or hegemonic discourses with respect to rainforest management and, that they are seeking for new ways of formulating environmental policy. The paper concludes that each group has a way of intervening and exercising a certain amount of power to modify the global political agenda for the governance of Amazonia, in function of their own particular interest. It is suggested that such tendency does not facilitate the development of indigenous peoples’ own strategies for the management of Amazonian environments and, that it makes difficult for them to exercise their right to self-determination.