Abstract
Protected areas cover, in Brazil, under nineteen different statuses, nearly 30% of the area of the Amazon region. Conservation areas, they are considered as an instrument of land blocking able to contain the advance of the economic fronts and, thus, the processes of deforestation (LENA, 2005) 1. The inhabitants of these protected areas, when they are tolerated, are therefore invited to an existence "between themselves and as formerly", according to a stereotype of social immutability often spontaneously projected on so-called traditional societies. Conversely, however, it is the ability of these societies to continually adjust their "way of being" in relation to the natural environment and with others - both in terms that make meaning locally and in a current context of accelerated change - allowing inhabited protected areas to continue to play an effective role in the preservation of the environment. Social change, when its actors master the dynamics, can thus become a guarantee of environmental conservation. As an example of this reversal of perspective, we present here the study of two Amerindian societies of Brazilian Amazonia from the village of Apiahiki (in the Yanomami indigenous land) and that of Moikarakô (in the indigenous Kayapó land). The analysis of the historical process through which the traditionally labile territory of these communities has been circumscribed and legalized as specific protected areas (such as Indigenous Lands)allows us to evaluate some of the effects this transformation is having on local patterns of management of tropical forest space and resources. Through these examples, we strive to highlight how such societies are able to invent innovative forms of "sustainable development" that meet both their own values and the exogenous conservation requirements of protected areas that have become their territories.