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).
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When this happens, it's usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it's been deleted.Intercultural orgainzation Oni Xobo recognizing Shipibo maestro Benjamin Mahua, for his lifetime of service as a onaya (healer). Benjamin Mahua, together with his brother (the late Pascual Mahua), are widely considered the first Shipibo maestros to begin offering the dieta of Noya Rao, although their method of energetically passing on the dieta was described differently by each of them (Benjamin passed "chipsies" to his dieteros while Pascual gave the "air/wind" of Noya Rao).
Mr Miyagi gets a black belt ;)
So cute
I recently met up with painter Mauro Reategui Perez (an art student of the late Pablo Amaringo) in Pucallpa, who has set up a small ayahuasca center by the Boiling River of Peru (The Boiling River being one of the most energetically powerful places I have ever dieted in). Mauro offers ceremonies together with Shipiba curandera Teolinda Rengifo Sanchez and a young Ashaninka named Miguel Minarez, which makes it a unique blend of the Shipibo, Ashaninka, and Mestizo traditions in one setting.
[Photo is of Miguel, Teolinda, and Mauro]
Beautiful- thank you for sharing 🙏🏽 do they have a website or contact?
Yes, contact info please?
Hello , can you send me more info , thanks 🙏🏻
Photos of Niwe Rao. It was the first plant dieta of the late Shipiba Maestra Olivia Arevalo. She used to call to its spirit to open her ceremonies and thereafter, clean and guide her students and pasajeros (passengers, or people not on dieta and attending ceremony). According to her apprentice, it is the medicine of the wind that connects you to the world of medicine, allowing a dietero to discover the cities that exist within this world that are filled with rivers and flowers. And after a strong dieta, when these visions open as a grace for the dedicated dietero, Maestra Olivia stated that the merayas (the legendary/mythical shamans of times now past) would arrive to teach one how to heal and become an onaya (curandero).
Missing my friend and teacher Shipiba curandera Luzmila Mori. She washed me, bathed me, healed me, and taught me, while always speaking with such honesty about her own vulnerabilities and limitations within the medicine world. I realize now how rare this is and have grown to appreciate what she imparted, whether knowingly or not, even more today.
I feel blessed that I had the opportunity to meet her 🙏
"Your next dieta will be Ishpingo. It will teach you about divine things." - Maestro Juan Flores of Mayantuyacu[Photo is of the Ishpingo tree growing in the jungle between the Ucayali River and the Cordillera El Sira mountain range, around 6-7 hours by fast boat from Pucallpa]
El jardín botánico
Este lugar es del centro de sanación wasan yaka
Ayahuasca vine growing at the base of the El Sira Cordillera mountain range and the Ucayali River, about 4 hours by boat from the Boiling River
Bellaco caspi tree growing near the Shipibo village of Puerto Nuevo and the Ashaninka village of Juancito in the Peruvian Amazon | Curandero Michael Sonn dieted this tree and once mentioned that it is the inner bark which is dieted; and that the tree offers "a tremendous amount of protection" and seems to teach how to extract virotes ("magical darts" sent by witchcraft) from patients.
For those of you who expressed interest in going deeper into the language of Shipibo medicine songs, official sign-ups are now open (see link below) with the 3 month course beginning at the end of July:forms.gle/mCXSP4yz8bvCjTuA9
"The world looks at the Amazon by satellite, and can only see the greenery and the rivers, but not the people who live here. To protect the trees and the rivers, you have to take care of the people who protect the trees and the rivers". - Vanda Witoto
Cuánta verdad
đź’›.
Selected excerpts from an article about Peru's indigenous communities in fear of rising violence from drug traffickers | Photo of indigenous land defenders taken near the Shipibo-Conibo community of Flor de Ucayali_____________
"One evening last November, hooded and masked men wielding automatic rifles walked onto the village green in the middle of Flor de Ucayali, an indigenous Amazon community in Peru."
"Firing in the air, they demanded to know the whereabouts of the village's leaders."
"Just months earlier, a young indigenous mother with her infant daughter had been surprised at her homestead by armed men who knocked her down, and threatened her. The woman was so scared that she left the community to live in a nearby city, neighbours said."
"Following that assault, Saul Martinez - the Apu or leader of the Shipibo-Konibo community of 265 people - imposed a three-month curfew, ordering the women and children to sleep in the village hall and the men to perform guard duty at night."
"Shipibo-Konibo leaders also reported ongoing invasions of their land to the prosecutor's office in Ucayali last November, but the armed men "keep appearing," Martinez said."
"They sent messages that if we did not desist (from reporting the incursions), they would take out those responsible, the leaders," he said, noting that images of dismembered bodies were sent to his mobile phone."
"Flor de Ucayali is among at least 100 indigenous communities in the central Amazon region of Ucayali that have been threatened in recent years by invading coca farmers, who grow the crop used to make cocaine for drug trafficking gangs."
__________
"Martinez, of Flor de Ucayali, said he had requested state protection for his community but was told by police to "take care of yourselves" as they did not have budget to make the boat journey from the regional capital Pucallpa, under three hours away."
"Are we living in the Peruvian state or somewhere else?," Martinez asked."
"Coca growing is a major driver of deforestation in Peru, which lost a record 2,000 sq km of forest in 2020, almost four times higher than the 2019 total."
"The environmental damage does not end there. Jungle cocaine laboratories also release toxic chemicals such as sulphuric acid, acetone and gasoline into the subsoil, streams and rivers."
_________
"While the invaders threatening Flor de Ucayali's territory are violent and better armed, the young men and women of the community are unbowed."
"Equipped with five donated bulletproof vests and a couple of shotguns, as well as bows and arrows, they patrol forest that extends to the border with Brazil."
"We'll keep on defending ourselves even if we must die," said Christian Tangui, 30, leader of the village's self-titled surveillance committee and the father of a young family."
"Tangui said he could not bear to see his children scared anymore by intruders - even if patrolling to try to stop them meant serious danger for guards."
"The community investigates newly-deforested spots with the help of state-run Programa Bosques, which updates a satellite map of their land monthly."
"Drones help them have a broader view of their land - but drug traffickers use the technology as well, to avoid military raids."
"During one recent patrol, indigenous defenders said they were forced to flee into the forest when intruders fired shots."
___________
"Robert Guimaraes, a longtime indigenous leader regionally and nationally, said that he had not seen such a level of organized crime in Ucayali before the pandemic."
"The situation is very serious because there are authorities colluding with drug trafficking," he said, citing the alleged involvement of regional officials, judges and prosecutors."
"Ucayali’s governor, Francisco Pezo Torres, is in preventive detention facing trial for allegedly leading a criminal organization in the regional government."
___________
"We are facing a whole apparatus of organized crime, of organized assassination," he said. "Our community is titled, however it does not have the protection of the state."
"As the Shipibo-Konibo people fear for their land and their lives, the Kakataibo indigenous group represent a chilling illustration of the potential dangers ahead."
"Arbildo Melendez, a Kakataibo leader, was shot dead in April 2020 in the Unipacuyacu community - 150 km from Flor de Ucayali - after having reported the presence of drug gangs to the authorities."
"His community remains under siege from coca farmers who have cleared swathes of forest. Unipacuyacu's 86 families have retreated to just 1% of its 230-sq-km territory, and Melendez's widow and four children are in hiding, fearing more violence."
"Herlin Odicio, leader of the Kakataibo federation, also has been forced into hiding in another town after death threats mounted, and his relatives have been attacked by armed men."
"Despite this, Odicio has been elected as a town councillor and has helped to get state approval to create two new indigenous reserves for his people, who want to live in isolation in their new 1,500 sq km territory."
"Unfortunately this (death threat) is for life and this persecution will continue," he said. "I will always defend my people, the struggle of my people. I will not remain silent."
___________
[Full article here: news.trust.org/item/20220628080457-otmur]
A younger & healthier Benjamin Mahua, who together with his brother Pascual Mahua, were considered the trunk of Noya Rao by some, prepares medicine in the year 2002 | Photo by Howard G Charing