I think anytime you have indigenous peoples, particularly from Latin America in any space,

we tend to be invisibleized, rendered as Latinos or Hispanos, rather than acknowledge for

who we are and what we are.

From Futuro Media, it's Latino USA.

I'm Maria Inojosa.

For Charlie Uruchima, Kichua is more than just a language. It's a culture and a way of being.

Charlie's parents are from Ecuador. They arrived to New York City in the early 1980s as part of a wave of migration of Ecuadorans escaping economic recession. Many of Ecuador's indigenous

people were impacted, including those from the Kichwa community. Kichwa is a variant of the

Kethwa language. It's rooted in the South American Andes and widely spoken in Ecuador.

Today, the New York metropolitan area is home to the largest

Ecuadorian population in the United States. Among them are thousands of quichwas, like Charlie

and his family. As a kid in New York City, Charlie did not grow up speaking quichua. However,

when he took his first Quechhwa course at New York University,

he says he felt it was more of a process of remembering than learning. We're remembering a

language that was stripped from us, from our parents, from our grandparents, from our ancestors.

With the knowledge of Kethwa, Charlie then began to learn the variant spoken in Ecuador,

which is Kichua.

At the same time, he also began to see the need for resources for New York's Kichua community,

like interpretation in schools and hospitals.

To help organize the community, Charlie and his collaborators,

Secondo Angamarka and Luis Antonio Lema,

founded Kichwa Hatari,

...