This article explores the intellectual production of two Kichwa women in the Ecuadorian highlands: Dolores Cacuango, who worked between the years of 1930 and 1970, and Luz María de la Torre, whose work began in 1970 and continues today. These two women developed proposals which challenge the idea of nation itself. The first does so polemicizing the official narrative and proposing the indigenous as the owners of the disputed territories; the second, rescuing native concepts which question the cultural homogenization and the civilizing process of the nation.