The U'wa word for outsiders is "Riowa," which literally means "the outsiders or the people from far away." To the U'wa, the connotation of the word for "outsider" is highly negative and is best interpreted as "those who are in conflict with the law of Nature." After surviving the first wave of Spanish conquests, a second wave of missionaries wanting to "civilize the savages," and a third invasion by colonizers who dynamited rivers to kill fish and cut down swaths of forest for cattle, the U'wa

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... ave come to the conclusion that, more often than not, the Riowa are "the people who don't think well.