Francisco Pontual is completing an Environmental Science, Policy, and Management dissertation at UC Berkeley on the historical, socioeconomic, environmental and political backgrounds that have been determining rural development practices in the Rio Negro Basin. His research offers some evidences and analysis to understand the profound cultural shifts on indigenous livelihoods and identities and suggests potentially tragic consequences resulting from the rural to urban migration of indigenous peoples, leading to the collapse of their last subsistence systems and families integrity. Born in Rio de Janeiro, he has been an independent nature video-maker, a professional ecotourism entrepreneur, an environmental consulting expert and a very experienced field biologist, manager and coordinator of research projects both in the Atlantic Forest and Amazonia, in Brazil.