ABSTRACT
From the vantage point of Amazonian Ecuador, this chapter develops an account of Kichwa thinking about the local forest, which contrasts with environmental narratives of civil society and government, and which views the forest neither as something to be left as pristine nor as a resource to be managed through best practices. Rather, Kichwa communities perceive the forest as a network of familial relationships among human beings, ancestors, trees, and animals. Because these relationships are maintained by patterns of non-paternalistic polite treatment and reciprocal giving and receiving, they have real consequences for environmental thinking. While the forest cannot be managed, it can be courted or attracted. The bounty, given by the forest out of family feeling, belongs neither to humanity as a whole nor to the state, but instead to families with whom it shares a preferential relationship.
