Do

• Respect community authority. Ambassadors and community members set the boundaries. Follow their lead.
• Buy directly and fairly when community artisan work or food products are offered.
• Ask before photographing people, artisan work, or cultural spaces. "No" means no.
• Listen more than you speak. The purpose of being here is to receive knowledge, not demonstrate your own.
• Understand that some knowledge is not for outsiders. Sacred, ceremonial, and restricted knowledge belongs to the communities that hold it.
• Accept that "no" is a complete answer. No explanation required. No negotiation.
• Support community work through fair trade, not pity. Buy what you value. Don't offer "donations" instead of fair payment.
• Learn the names of peoples correctly. Huitoto, not Witoto or Uitoto used incorrectly. Ask if unsure.

Don't

• Treat Indigenous people as performers. Ambassadors are here as representatives, not entertainers.
• Ask for sacred medicine experiences casually. Yagé, mambe, and other ceremonial practices are not tourist activities.
• Photograph children or elders without explicit consent from the person and, for children, from a guardian.
• Contact isolated peoples or support any operation that attempts to.
• Use poverty as a marketing image. Don't photograph or share images that reduce people to their material conditions.
• Call Indigenous knowledge primitive, simple, or exotic. These are complex, sophisticated systems developed over centuries.
• Pressure ambassadors to share sacred or personal stories. They share what they choose. Respect the boundary.
• Assume all Amazonian peoples are the same. There are dozens of distinct peoples, languages, and knowledge systems in the Colombian Amazon alone.

Why This Matters

The communities represented at Dulce Amazónica have survived forced contact, rubber boom violence, displacement, and decades of missionary and extractive pressure. What they offer here — their presence, their artisan work, their stories — is a deliberate choice made under their own authority.

Respectful engagement is not a courtesy. It is the minimum requirement for this exchange to be what it is supposed to be: a dignified, equitable human connection between people who carry different kinds of knowledge about the world.

If you are unsure whether something is appropriate, ask. If you ask and the answer is unclear or uncomfortable, assume the answer is no.