The indigenous peoples understand that they have to recover their cultural identity, or to live it if they have already recovered it. They also understand that this is not a favor or a concession, but simply their natural right to be recognized as belonging to a culture that is distinct from the Western culture, a culture in which they have to live their own faith.
Interpretation
Indigenous peoples have a natural right to their cultural identity and faith, distinct from Western culture.
In this quote, Samuel Ruiz emphasizes the importance of indigenous peoples reclaiming and living their cultural identities. He asserts that their right to be recognized as a distinct culture is not a privilege granted by others, but an inherent right that allows them to express their beliefs and traditions without being overshadowed by Western cultural norms.
In practice
In a speech advocating for indigenous rights during a cultural festival.
[Culture] denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms, by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.
Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they _x000D_ understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.
When I was growing up, the Spanish-speaking world was Balkanized. We were isolated. We didn't know what was happening in cultural terms in Ecuador, Colombia and Chile. Nowadays, this has changed a lot - fortunately for writers and readers. There is much more integration.
Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can't understand. We hate to give up those reins of our culture. To find our own music playing in elevators. The ballad for our revolution, turned into background music for a television commercial. To find our generation's clothes and hair suddenly retro.
The soul of India lives in its villages.
...Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.
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