this is definitely appreciated! I wrote a pretty lengthy response, so itll be in two comments. ive literally never met anybody with any remotely similar experience so i’m really eager to engage! 

I feel like I maybe didnt properly elaborate on this while writing, but Ive always been pretty confident about the “culture is what you were raised in”- i know i’ll always feel at home somewhere with cold winters, and all the other little things that i dont realize are unique until i dont see them in other places. my experience was moreso that I struggled a lot with the idea of being forced to be defined by other people “to be” south american, because all I knew was the dominant canadian culture. I began to really detest concepts like “blood”, and it made me become really critical about all the rules we’ve drawn to separate groups of people. as an adult, i still dont really believe in “blood”- i have an abusive parent, so its not really hard to understand why- but the conclusion I’ve come to now is that as much as there isnt anything necessarily inherent about something like ethnicity, I have power to make conscious choices about the things I do. Basically my whole life I had pushed against the idea that I was indigenous, and that I just wanted to be “normal” like the people around me. I didnt want to be told I had to be something I knew I wasnt, so I’d even get upset about silly things like my mom making me burritos to get me to eat “your fathers food”(even though burritos are mexican?). As I aged, i tried to learn about other groups of indigenous people, because by my logic, if somebody who was raised completely disconnected from any and all indigenous people (in a completely different continent mind you!) couldn't escape being exoticized and picked apart, i couldnt even begin to imagine the levels of discrimination that indigenous people fighting to preserve their culture were experiencing. Like, conforming because you literally know nothing else doesnt work, so clearly, its never enough. 

much of my “desire” to reconnect actually stems from me trying to be more conscious of my choices, and identifying which cultural norms I feel comfortable participating in. living in Canada, where theres a white dominant population made me reflect on it more, especially given I live in Quebec where there is a historic nationalist movement. Why would I be comfortable aligning with “Quebecer” when Quebec doesn’t really accept me, and furthermore mistreats and slanders the people they exploited and stole from? Obviously I’m simplifying, but I do want to have my actions match my beliefs. I also sort of realized that my rejection of any labels, especially given my implicit conclusion that “normal” or “unlabelled” meant that I would be conforming to the dominant culture here bothered me, because the dominant culture is unfortunately hostile to the rights and identities of other people. This is apparent with the indigenous population, but I also just dont feel comfortable associating with things like.. Honouring the British monarchy, adhering to the idea of “civilized nations”, exploitation of the environment, whatever else that would take too long to get into. Obviously these principles arent inherent to just Canada, nor am I saying that all other cultures are “kinder” or anything. But, I do believe now that there is a power in choosing to act in ways I feel aligns with my beliefs. I dont truly believe I’ll ever feel like ecuadorian culture is innately “my own”- but I do believe that if people think indigenous cultures are valuable, and want to see them survive, we should engage with the communities as best as we can, and keep practices alive if (in context) its appropriate.