Revitalizing The Kukama Language With Apps

Iquitos Peru
Oct 9, 2025
7 min read

Updated: Dec 17, 2025

Supporting Indigenous Language Through Technology

In our latest field update, Dr. David Fleck reports on the launch of a second interactive phone application to support the Kukama, one of Peru’s largest indigenous groups. Their communities seek to restore and revitalize their native language, which is at risk of being lost. This new app features a fun, word-matching game for kids, focusing on the ecology of local rainforest plants and animals in the Kukama language!

This app can be freely downloaded here from the Google Play Store. It is the 12th and latest in a series of successful applications built by Acaté in collaboration with communities in the Peruvian Amazon. Our educational applications vary in design, depending on the goals of the ethnic group with whom they are developed.

The Importance of Language Revitalization

The primary goal of our Kukama apps is to contribute to the revitalization of the highly endangered Kukama language. The Kukama people, located along the Amazon River and its larger tributaries, were among the first indigenous groups contacted by Spanish invaders 500 years ago. Their population suffered greatly due to introduced diseases and the violence of the rubber boom. Despite these challenges, they remain one of the most numerous ethnic groups in the Amazon basin, with an estimated population of 36,000, spread across small villages in Peru, Colombia, and Brazil.

Due to intense racial and linguistic discrimination, many Kukama people began to hide their ethnic identity and stopped teaching the Kukama language to their children. However, in recent decades, the Kukama have started to reclaim their culture and ethnic identity. For instance, residents of the Kukama village of Manacamiri, located just 10 minutes from the city of Iquitos, have declared their village an indigenous community. They have elected a village chief, requested bilingual education from the Peruvian Ministry of Education, and established an association for marketing their traditional handicrafts.

Revitalizing the Kukama Language

A priority among the cultural revaluation goals of Kukama communities is to revitalize their ancestral language. The ability to communicate in their native tongue fosters pride and ethnic identity. It serves as both a political asset and a means of unity for the Kukama nation throughout Peru, Colombia, and Brazil. Unfortunately, only a handful of elders today can speak the language fluently.

Educational Challenges

Most Kukama villages lack elders who can teach the language, and educational materials in the Kukama language are scarce. In response, Acaté Amazon Conservation has partnered with Kukama elders to document their language and create engaging language-learning materials accessible to all Kukama communities.

The Memoria Kukama Phone Application

Upon downloading and playing the new Memoria Kukama game, users will notice a focus on animals, plants, and habitat types. This reflects our second goal: to preserve traditional ecological knowledge and pass it on to the next generation. Since prehistoric times, the Kukama have fished, hunted, and farmed along the Upper Amazon River and its major territories without depleting resources or causing local extinctions.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge

The Kukama's ability to subsist without harming the environment stems from their extensive knowledge of the flora, fauna, and ecology of their habitats. When this knowledge is lost, the ability to live in harmony with nature is also lost. Consequently, descendants may turn to extractive and commercial activities for survival or migrate to cities.

With this in mind, the Memoria Kukama game is designed to help the younger generation learn their ancestral language while enjoying an entertaining and challenging game. At the same time, it familiarizes them with the plants, animals, and ecosystems in their territory. The game consists of 40 levels, ordered like an expedition, taking players from a Kukama village to various types of farms, aquatic habitats, and primary rainforest ecosystems. Players earn medals as they learn the Kukama names of local flora and fauna in each habitat.

We collaborated closely with Kukama elders to document their traditional knowledge about the 360 animals and plants found in different habitats. For instance, not all fish species inhabit lakes, and certain trees are restricted to seasonally flooded forests.

Kukamaru Animaru Phone Application

Published in 2022, Kukamaru Animaru was the first application developed by Acaté Amazon Conservation with the Kukama communities. This interactive app features over 600 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, and other invertebrates native to the Kukama territory, each with specific names in the Kukama language. Each species is accompanied by an illustration, its name in Kukama and local Spanish, and a sound clip of the Kukama name that plays when the image is tapped.

The Kukamaru Animaru app is taxonomically organized to help learners distinguish similar species. It serves as a type of field guide in the Kukama language, helping young Kukama people become familiar with local fauna, which is essential for continuing to be effective stewards of their ancestral territories. This app is currently being used as a native language learning tool in some Kukama schools.

Why Cellphone Apps?

A recent trend in indigenous communities in Amazonian Peru is the widespread use of cellphones, especially among youth. Even in villages lacking telephone service and internet access, young people spend a lot of time using cell phones to listen to music, watch videos, take and edit photos, and play video games downloaded when they have internet access. Rather than lament this trend as an “unproductive waste of time,” Acaté’s education initiative takes advantage of this technological opportunity to create applications for learning the Kukama language and traditional ecological knowledge.

Second-language learning requires a significant investment of time. While it is easier for children than for adults, children can lose interest if the learning process is not entertaining. Keeping this in mind, Acaté strives to create educational applications that are engaging, challenging, and attractive. If Kukama children spend enough time playing with language-learning applications, we believe we can contribute significantly to the revitalization of the Kukama language. We are currently seeking funding to create more applications for this purpose.

Key Team Members for the Production of the Kukama Apps

Meet Rosa Amías Murayari, expert on the Kukama language, culture, and ancestral knowledge. Rosita was born in a homestead along the Marañón River near the Kukama village of Parinari. She did not learn Spanish until she moved to a larger village for primary school. Her parents and older relatives were monolingual in the Kukama language. It was only after her mother passed away when Rosita was 30 years old that she stopped speaking Kukama daily.

Kukama village of Parinari ©Acaté

Rosita is the most competent living speaker of the Kukama language, making her invaluable for its revitalization. It has been a pleasure and an honor to work with her in producing these apps. In addition to her language knowledge, Rosita is also an expert on Kukama subsistence strategies and the ecology of the rivers, lakes, and forests where she lived during her youth.

Rosita teaching Dave the names of plants in her dooryard garden ©Acaté

Rosita co-authored a comprehensive Kukama-Spanish dictionary, which was an important resource during the initial stages of developing Acaté’s Kukama language apps. She has been engaged as a Kukama language teacher by FORMABIAP, an institute in Iquitos that trains young Kukama and other Peruvian ethnic group members to be bilingual schoolteachers. Currently, Rosita lives in Iquitos and has been essential in developing the Kukama applications, teaching us the names of plants and animals, and providing recordings for the apps.

Rosita and Dave at the recording studio in Iquitos. ©Acaté

Rosita is working to teach her grandchildren to speak Kukama. Now, through the apps she is helping Acaté to develop, her teachings will reach thousands of Kukama children and youth in Amazonian Peru, Colombia, and Brazil.

Meet María Ricopa Aricari, Kukama language teacher. María, who lives in the Kukama village of Manacamiri, has been a key team member in producing Acaté’s Kukama educational apps. María spoke only the Kukama language as a child, but after her parents died when she was young, she had no one to speak Kukama with. As a result, she forgot much of the language. However, it was surprising to find that the more we worked with her, the more she remembered, and the broader her teachings became. This taught us an important lesson about judging language proficiency. María collaborated in developing both of Acaté’s Kukama apps.

Meet Guillermo Nëcca Pëmen Mënquë, indigenous artist and expert on rainforest ecology. Guillermo has been working with David Fleck and Acaté Amazon Conservation since 2014, creating more than one thousand beautiful and life-like images of rainforest animals, plants, and ecological scenes. He is a self-taught artist, but he learned the natural history of the rainforest from his father and elder relatives during hunting expeditions and while harvesting forest foods and collecting medicinal plants. His drawings make the apps and books attractive to children, enhancing the engagement of these educational materials.

We would like to express our gratitude to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) and the Ford Foundation, who generously financed the Memoria Kukama application, and Fondo Socioambiental del Perú for financing the Kukamanu Animaru app.

A must-read is our November 2024 field report chronicling the second year of an extraordinary initiative designed to strengthen food security, climate resilience, women’s empowerment, economic development, medicinal agroforestry, and more!

Stay tuned for forthcoming updates on our community-based endangered river turtle conservation program, governance initiative, and much more!

Acaté was recently featured on CNN International and CNN Español, as well as in the CNN Español series Ancestral Guardians!

Acaté Amazon Conservation is a non-profit organization based in the United States and Peru that operates in a true and transparent partnership with the Matsés people of the Peruvian Amazon. The Matsés safeguard a critical conservation corridor and protect some of the last remaining uncontacted tribes from unwanted encroachment. Acaté works to preserve their forests and way of life by supporting on-the-ground initiatives led by the Matsés indigenous people.

Operating on the frontlines of conservation, Acaté’s initiatives over the past decade have included the first indigenous medicine encyclopedia as well as projects with original methodology in sustainable economic development, traditional medicine, medicinal agroforestry, nutritional diversity, regenerative agriculture, integrated aquaculture systems, biodiversity inventory, education, native language literacy, participatory mapping, and protection of uncontacted tribal groups in isolation. All of our initiatives are developed with, led, and implemented by the Matsés indigenous people. Donations are tax-deductible and go directly to fund these on-the-ground initiatives that operate with unparalleled transparency.