Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca, the visionary medicine of the Amazon, is typically used in formal ceremony by the maestro to open and close the dieta.
Tobacco
The Amazonian form of tobacco, smoked as mapacho or ingested as rapé, is often used during dietas for energetic cleansing and connecting with the spirit of the plant or tree being dieted.
Deep Healing
Each master plant or tree is characterized by its ability to offer a special type of healing. Many believe that successful completion of a dedicated plant dieta offers more healing than any other type of healing modality.
Shamanic Apprenticeship
The dieta is the process by which apprentices from the Amazonian tradition of vegatalismo (plant-based shamanism & healing) learn to become curanderos (healers).
Paka and Rora of the Noke Koi people. Paka first began drinking ayahuasca at the age of 7, started to help in ceremony by the age of 14, and has been studying the medicine "seriously" for the past seven years under the tutelage of a Noke Koi Pajé. He is the son of a Cacique (chief) and one of the primary individuals transmitting and teaching medicine songs to the Noke Koi youth. He recently moved to a village on the Rio Gregorio (near Yawanawa territory) to live deeper within the Amazon Rainforest with his family.
Excellent photo!
This is so beautiful. My name is Nathalie and I was looking for groups on Facebook that can lead me to an authentic experience studying in the Amazon with a tribe. The Amazon has certainly been calling. If it aligns with you, I was wondering if you can share more information with me about this. Send me a direct message if so. With love, Nathalie.
Espaço Kaxinawa, a community center for indigenous peoples with a "little aldeia" as a backyard for ceremonies, located in the middle of the city of Rio Branco, Brazil
Right in the city! That's awesome ♥️ Connecting everyone to their Rainforest roots.
Sônia Guajajara, born to a Guajajara family on Araribóia Indigenous Land (Terra Indígena Araribóia), located in the Amazonian rainforest in the northeastern state of Maranhão, and first Minister of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil
About the origins of the Indigenous Conference on Ayahuasca as reported by Angelica Santa Cruz: ayahuascaconferenciaindigena.org/en/
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"Made by indigenous people for indigenous people, the [Indigenous Conference on Ayahuasca] conference was held for the first time in December 2017, in the Barão do Rio Branco village of the Puyanawa Indigenous Land, in the municipality of Mâncio Lima, 147 km away."
"It appeared as a reaction to AYA, the World Ayahuasca Conference, organized by the International Center for Education, Research and Service in Ethnobotany (Iceers), a Spanish entity dedicated to clarifying to society about psychoactive plants."
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"It [AYA] was an event formatted along the lines of academic knowledge production. Scientists gathered in working groups and talked about topics ranging from the plant's psychotropic effects on the body's molecules to legal aspects for its use in psychotherapies."
"By then, two editions of the AYA had already been held. The first in Ibiza, in 2014, did not involve the participation of the indigenous peoples of Acre.
“We wrote letters to the organizers asking how we, the original Amazonian peoples who have taken care of this medicine over time, and from here in Acre, where it spread throughout the world, were not invited?”, says Iskukua Yawanawá, young leader of the village Nova Esperança, on the banks of the Gregório River, in Tarauacá."
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"The second AYA took place in Rio Branco, in 2016. This time, the region's indigenous people were invited. They did not like what they saw. They felt treated like supporting actors."
"They were placed, for example, in lodging at the Federal University of Acre (Ufac) and ate in cafeterias, while the academics occupied the city's hotels and went to restaurants."
"Accustomed to long conversations typical of the Amerindian peoples, they were surprised by the format in which they had to express their ideas quickly, in spartan five-minute windows. And if they tried to talk any more, they had their microphones cut off."
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"At a certain point, they came across a moralizing aura emanating from non-indigenous people. In front of an audience of about seven hundred people, one of them asked Benki Piyãko to answer if the original peoples were selling ayahuasca and, therefore, making its use too trivial."
"The Ashaninka leader – an environmentalist who has received international awards and was one of those chosen to join the transition team of the Lula government – took the microphone and replied:
“I traveled the whole world and, everywhere I went, ayahuasca arrived before me."
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"But, above all, they smelled in the event a climate of safe conduct for science, to the detriment of ancestral knowledge.
“Let's do our own”, decided Benki Piyãko and Biraci Brasil Nixiwaka, one of the spiritual leaders of the Yawanawá people.
Right away, they began to spread the word to their relatives, the way indigenous people refer to members of other tribes."
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"With a certain aura of mystery – held in the middle of the forest, around a theme that is usually fascinating – the indigenous conference began, from then on, to draw the attention of peoples and institutions around the world."
"And it reached the format seen in September of 2022: an event with complex and sophisticated debates, discussed by a human landscape composed of characters with epic stories."
The late Pascual Mahua, Shipibo maestro and trunk of Noya Rao, who conferred the air/wind of Palo Volador upon his longest studied apprentice of 10+ years
Can you elaborate on "conferred"?
gracias Pasquel Mahua familia Shipibo community & madre Ayahuasca
A garden filled with Chacruna plants @ Santo Daime Flor de São Francisco, Acre, Brazil
So Beautiful ❤️
Cumaru tree @ Amazon Rainforest of Brazil
Shihuahuaco?!!
Travis Arjuna
Tonka Bean 👃💖
Pajé Busã started dieting at the age of 5 and was born, raised, and continues to live in the deep Amazon Rainforest. He works with approximately 450 different plants including Rare Muka, which requires a one year dieta (but can be completed in shorter periods to add up to a year).The intention for his first Muka dieta was to become a leader, and he is now the overall chief of all the Huni Kuin villages of the Humaitá river.
Is The Muka Teacher a Sacred "Potato" like Plant Medicine? ❤️
Tume Huni Kuin, sister of Chief Tuim Nova Era, and indigenous female leader of all Huni Kuin villages of the River Humaitá, who has plans to create a center where indigenous female healers from all tribes can gather to live, teach, learn, heal, and organize for greater empowerment
Haux Haux ♥️
Saludos desde Asturias ( España ) Todo mi apoyo. Salud y Libertad
"The traditional use of ayahuasca and other master plants, bequeathed by the indigenous nations of Amazonia, is first of all as a medicine with a spiritual dimension or religious practice (in the sense of religare, to connect “sky and earth”) that heals the body, mind, and spirit.""It is not just a medicine, nor just a religion or a spiritual practice."
"It intimately associates the two dimensions of healing and spiritual liberation."
"Healing corresponds to the search for immediate well-being in the here and now, while spiritual liberation addresses metaphysical questions that go beyond the space of our embodied life."
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"When the spiritual dimension is ignored, “salvation,” in conventional theological terms, especially when the ritual part is left out, ayahuasca is reduced to a facilitator of psychotherapy with the risk of distancing or disconnecting from transcendence, the global meaning of life."
"Symmetrically, if the dimension of healing with the whole body of gestures and associated medical practices is ignored (blowing, sucking, diets, etc.), there is a risk of transforming its use into an instrument of sectarian religious practices."
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"We cannot, therefore, speak of the effects of ayahuasca and other master plants without specifying the use made of them, in what context, with whom, with what intention."
- Dr. Jacques Mabit, Takiwasi
[Photo of Maestro Juan Flores, Jacques Mabit and the late Rosa Giove in ceremony]
Saludos. No se coloquen ustedes el nombre de religión mmm Las lacras de las religiones mmm son las que hacen las Guerras el hambre las violaciones y esclavitud de cuerpo y mente mmm Sin dios ni amo ni patrón Salud y Libertad
A table listing of both cultivated and wild plants of Peru (including 40 medicinal plants, although not comprehensive) including their common name in Spanish; Shipibo name; and scientific classification. [Table is from "Study of medicinal plants from Shipibo knowledge" by Samuel Cauper]
Marc Jacques Mächler
Photo of Shipibo in ceremonial attire taken circa 1951
Wow! Is this someone you met?
A critical perspective on Shipibo shamanism and ayahuasca retreat centers in Peru | Selected excerpts from "Ethnicity Inc., Shamanism Ltd." by Bernd Brabec de Mori_____________
"While the former discourse of power was held by missionaries, soldiers, merchants and settlers, from this time on, scholars and tourists quickly characterised the Shipibo, among others, as “masters of ayahuasca,” thereby taking over from their colonial predecessors as the makers of discourse about what is especially “Indigenous.”
"The confluence of these two situations created an alleged win-win situation for both the Moderns and the Indigenous: the Moderns obtained their “eco-spiritual health” by providing coin and the Indigenous obtained that coin (and related power) by providing ayahuasca. One problem here is the power relation that remains, perhaps even more so, a colonial one."
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"A “classic” image of colonial power includes:
(i) a hard-working or even enslaved majority of Indigenous peoples who do not benefit from the interaction
(ii) an elite among the Indigenous peoples, often divided among themselves, but well sustained and kept divided by the colonial power
(iii) intermediaries from the colonial power who speak the vernacular language and have a certain understanding of the local culture (the “good guys” in the movies)
(iv) a form of re-conceptualizing industry that transforms extracted resources into saleable goods, and
(v) unknowing or well-meaning consumers who buy those products and fuel this commercial machine with money."
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"This image of radical coloniality is directly congruent to the structure of contemporary ayahuasca neo-shamanism."
"For example, fees in 2019 (precovid) for a three-week “spiritual retreat,” including a series of ayahuasca ceremonies, varied between USD 2,000–4,000, in all-inclusive lodges or centres that are led by Western/Northern or urban “facilitators” (ie. the “good guys” or intermediaries, iii. above)."
"Most often, smaller or more remote lodges are led by Indigenous “shamans” themselves (ii. above). These lodges can rarely be booked via internet; prices are significantly lower and participants are mostly fewer."
"The winning teams are renowned “shamans” cooperating with skilled “facilitators” who have direct links to New Age or eco-alternative circles in Northern countries."
"In many cases, the communities in which these lodges are hosted, remain separate, and Indigenous people not directly working for the lodges are often excluded from the benefits and hold no high opinion of the people visiting and running these lodges."
"They must see for themselves how to make their living, and where they belong, and have to still engage in fishing, hunting, logging or other extractive work."
I really appreciate this Conversation. As an Anthropology student in The US and a supporter of Indigenous Rights and Sovereignty... It is challenging to know what the "right" thing to do is. We aren't being taught all the subtle ways that our best intentions are actually reinforcing the problems. What are suggestions for westerners to get educated on actually being helpful? I've sat with Indigenous Tribes in Conversation but don't understand clear , universal answers that I can relate for my "culture" across all issues, as the diversity is so wide across lands and regions. I truly appreciate The Indigenous Tribes who are generous in their patience with westerners who really want to be helpful but are still ignorant.
Hello