– Moi Guiquita, transcribed and translated from Spanish by Oliver Simões.
You know, I’m usually called Indian, indigenous, or aboriginal.
And while these words sound lofty, they seem very narrow to me—because they try to cram centuries of history into a single label.
As if I were born from a category, rather than from a womb, a river, or a community.
So what does all this really mean?
Or rather: who decides what I should call myself?
Why do I have to fit into a label to exist?
I am not a minority, I am not folklore, I am not a word to fill documents or pretty speeches.
My name is Moi, which in my native language means “dream”.
I speak Wao Terero , the language of the Waorani people—and Waorani means “people who walk”.
This means that, before they gave us a label, before they tried to name us from the outside, we were already a path, we were already a movement, history, living memory.
In my family, names don’t come from fashion or documents.
They come from the forest, the river, the thunder; some are named after a tree, others after a jaguar, and others are born from the dreams of spirits.
In my house, no one asks me, “How do you identify?”
We recognize each other with just a look.
We name each other with love—not with labels.
We don’t need labels to exist.
We are human.
Before being indigenous, native, or whatever, we are life.
The most human thing is to name us from love — not from differences, not from categories.
Because I don’t come from a word.
I come from a lineage, from a history.
And while I respect those who are proud of those words, I prefer to be called by my name—because I don’t represent a minority group.
I represent life that walks, that breathes, that dreams…
And you?
Who are you when no one labels you?
What name do you carry when you walk in silence?
The most human thing is to recognize us without the need to define us—
because we are not concepts.
We are stories that keep walking…
Tags: literary translation, prose