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Research on conflicts associated with oil and natural gas exploitation in the Amazon Basin is taken as the basis for examining the points of convergence and tensions between two large collective campaigning forces operating in the Amazon Basin: the Indian movement and the environmental movement. The Author first looks at the concept of ethnicity alongside the actual situation of identity-related movements in Latin America, bringing to evidence the special characteristics of the Andean-Amazonian movement. The paper turns next to identification of the ways in which ethnicity issues and environmentalism converge, using the case of the COICA (Coordination of Indian Organisations of the Amazon basin). Finally, analysis is made of the problems the Amazon Indian Movement has to face, in particular those stemming from tensions with certain sectors of the ecologist movement and internal divisions that have recently sprung up.