The term kukama is made up of two words: ku is ‘chacra’ and kama is ‘breast, breast, breasts’, and literally means ‘chacra-breast’ or ‘it suckles from the chakra’. In the word kukamiria, the other two segments, miri and ia, are translated as ‘thin, small, boy’ and ‘heart, center’, respectively. In this way, the word Kukama Kukamiria would mean ‘small breastfed farm’.

Due to their long interrelation with a floodland ecosystem and their great adaptation to it, the Kukama Kukamiria have developed different instruments and techniques for fishing, which today are a heritage inherited from their ancestors. There is research that affirms that the communities of the mestizo riverine population and other indigenous peoples that currently settle in similar ecosystems, recognize the Kukama Kukamiria as the ‘great fishermen’ of the department of Loreto.

The Kukama Kukamiria people live mainly in the department of Loreto. According to the results of the 2017 national census, due to their customs and ancestors there have been 10,762 people who have self-identified as part of the Kukama Kukamiria people at the national level; and due to the language or mother tongue with which they learned to speak in their childhood, there have been 1,185 people who have stated that they speak the Kukama Kukamiria language, which corresponds to 0.02% of the total native languages ​​at the national level. In addition, data obtained by the Ministry of Culture, the population of the communities of the Kukama Kukamiria people is estimated at 37,053 people.