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Description: A standard assumption in the bilingual language processing literature is that the ease of access of a word in a language is determined by the speaker’s proficiency in the language as a whole, together with the word’s frequency of exposure. Alternatively, it could be that the word’s frequency, independent of proficiency, drives the access. Previous studies of bilingual lexical access cannot distinguish these possibilities at the population level because exposure frequency is higher in the proficient language for the words that have been tested. Here, we investigated lexical access in color terms in Tsimane’-Spanish bilinguals, all of whom are more proficient in Tsimane’, their native language. Frequency and proficiency are dissociated in this population, because color terms are generally more frequent in Spanish than Tsimane’. Twenty-two Tsimane’-Spanish bilinguals took part in a picture naming task where participants labeled colors and animals. In line with past research, participants were better at naming animals in Tsimane’ than Spanish. But contrary to the proficiency hypothesis, participants were better at naming colors in Spanish than Tsimane’ except for the three color words that are most frequent (jaibes = white, tsincus = black, jaines = red). These results suggest that the notion of proficiency may be fully explained by exposure frequency.