“Indigenous groups in the Colombian Amazon have long suffered deprivations at the hands of outsiders. First came the diseases brought by the European Conquest, then came abuses under colonial rule. In modern times, some Amazonian communities were virtually enslaved by the debt-bondage system run by rubber traders: Indians could work their entire lives without ever escaping the cycle of debt. Later, periodic invasions by gold miners, oil companies, colonists, and illegal coca-growers took a heavy toll on remaining indigenous populations. Without title to their land, organization, or representation, indigenous Colombians in the Amazon seemed destined to be exploited and abused.

But new hope would emerge in the 1980s, thanks partly to the efforts of Martin von Hildebrand, an ethnologist who would help indigenous Colombians eventually win control over 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) of Amazon rainforest—an area larger than the United Kingdom.

Von Hildebrand first visited the Colombian Amazon in 1970, spending four months living amongst remote indigenous communities. He found them exploited by rubber traders and deprived of basic human rights. Indigenous communities were in decline as youths abandoned their homeland for towns and traditional knowledge was lost with each passing elder.

Living with tribes during the 1970s, von Hildebrand learned of the traditional land management practices of indigenous societies as well as their philosophies of co-existing with the rainforest. He helped free communities from the tyranny of rubber and started developing an education system for the indigenous. Inspired to help them win title to their territory and therefore greater autonomy, von Hildebrand joined the Colombian government in 1986, as Head of Indigenous Affairs and adviser to President Virgilio Barco Vargas. In government von Hildebrand helped push through legislation that would lead to the establishment of 20 million hectares of collective indigenous territory—a move that would become a fundamental part of the country’s 1991 constitution.

Winning recognition of land rights however was only a first step towards autonomy so in 1990 von Hildebrand founded Fundacion Gaia Amazonas to establish a governance structure that would allow indigenous to have greater control over their health and education systems, and the fate of their rainforest environment. Today von Hildebrand serves as head of both Gaia Amazonas and the COAMA Program, a coalition of NGOs that aims to strengthen ties between indigenous groups across Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela to help them develop sustainable livelihoods and approaches to self-governance. The alliance includes 250 indigenous communities across 22 tribes. Some 70 million hectares (270,000 square miles) have been recognized as Indigenous collective property, but tribes are looking to double that amount. Gaia Amazonas is working with several NGOs, the Ministry of Environment and National Parks on a strategy to conserve 80 percent of the Colombian Amazon.”

Read the  interview here .

No, I have not seen it myself. I have seen the future. I have seen the devastating results of the presence of Plus Petrol in the Amazon, Peru, Loreto

Published November 2, 2009 by NACLA Report on the Americas.

By Bill Weinberg / NACLA

After the indigenous uprising in Peru’s Amazon region in June, the country is in many ways fundamentally changed. For the first time, indigenous leaders from the rainforest are in direct dialogue with the highest levels of government. For the first time, a powerful alliance has emerged between rainforest peoples, highland campesinos, and urban workers, who joined in the protest campaign. The days when Lima’s political elite could treat the rainforest as an internal colony seem definitively over.

Yet there has been a high price in human lives, and only the most controversial of President Alan García’s legislative decrees, which triggered the uprising, have been overturned. These decrees-promulgated under special powers granted to García by Peru’s congress in 2008 to ready the country for the new U.S. free trade agreement-would undo a generation of progress in protecting indigenous territorial rights in the rainforest, opening indigenous lands to oil drilling, logging, and other forms of resource extraction as never before.

The southern Amazon region of Madre de Dios was the scene of considerable unrest during the past two years’ worth of protests. In early July 2008, regional government offices in Puerto Maldonado, the regional capital of Madre de Dios, were occupied for three days. The city was paralyzed as the Native Federation of the Río Madre de Dios (FENAMAD), an indigenous Amazonian organization, joined the regional campesino union in launching the general strike. Campesino demands for land titles were united with indigenous demands for territorial rights, while federations representing small miners, Brazil-nut harvesters, Puerto Maldonado moto-taxi drivers, and other sectors also joined the strike, uniting in an Alliance of Federations.

Then the regional government offices were burned down. It remains unclear who was responsible, but indigenous protesters were accused. More than a year later, the burned-out shell of the building still stands, its walls scrawled with graffiti. The words have been painted over in an attempt to obscure them, but they are still readable: “La tierra es del pueblo” (The land is the people’s) and “No se vende, se defiende” (We don’t sell out, we defend ourselves). Some 25 were arrested, and Jorge Payaba, a former president of FENAMAD, was beaten and hospitalized. His successor, Antonio Iviche, went into hiding for several days before the charges against him were dropped.

Now it appears that an indigenous pledge to physically resist the operations of Dallas-based Hunt Oil on communal rainforest lands could reignite the uprising. In what is shaping up as an important test case, Hunt Oil is opening trails in preparation for seismic exploration within an indigenous reserve in Madre de Dios.

Hunt signed a contract with Peru’s government to explore within Lot 76 in 2006 and later brought in the Spanish firm Repsol as a half-partner in the project. The lot overlaps with much of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve as well as 16 titled native communities-including those 10 that are adjacent to the reserve and jointly responsible for managing it with the national government. Hunt’s exploration work calls for 18 seismic lines with 20,000 detonation points across the southern part of the reserve. This work is to be serviced by 166 mobile camps with heliports, as well a main base camp. FENAMAD said these activities are to take place in the most sensitive part of the reserve, near the headwaters of the rivers that flow into the Río Madre de Dios.

FENAMAD’s Iviche, a traditional Harakmbut leader, said the oil project threatens the forests and waters of the reserve, which was established in 2002 for the use of local Harakmbut, Yine, and Matsigenka communities.

“Our communities have decided not to allow these activities in the communal reserve,” Iviche said, charging that Hunt is operating without the consent of the area’s native inhabitants, most of whom oppose the oil company’s presence. “They have never consulted with the communities.” Failing to adequately consult indigenous communities on land-use issues in their territories is a violation of both international standards and Peru’s constitution.

The Amarakaeri reserve was created following years of petitioning by FENAMAD-and a march in April 2002 by some 1,000 indigenous people in Puerto Maldonado. Each of the 10 communities bordering the reserve has its own range within it for hunting and gathering, but indigenous residents cannot enter the zonas silvestres, or wild zones-yet this is where Hunt is now operating.

Additionally, Lot 76 borders (or nearly borders, separated by a strip barely two thirds of a mile wide) two national parks. On the north, it borders, and slightly overlaps with, a State Reserve for Peoples in Voluntary Isolation. This was created along with the Amarakaeri reserve to protect “uncontacted” Matsigenka bands believed to be living in this zone.

On September 9, FENAMAD sought an injunction against Hunt’s exploration work before the Madre de Dios Superior Court of Justice, the equivalent of a local district court. Said FENAMAD secretary Jaime Corisepa: “We have to attack on every level, using the courts, but we are ready to defend our territory physically.”

In 2007, Hunt began holding “information workshops” at FENAMAD’s offices in Puerto Maldonado and at some of the communities bordering the reserve. Corisepa denies these were consultations, saying the company representatives were just “announcing what they were going to do.”

One community, Shintuya, has signed an agreement with Hunt to accept $30,000 in compensation for allowing the company access to its titled lands. There is a dispute as to whether the community approved this decision by the two-thirds vote required under Peruvian law.

FENAMAD said Hunt is required at a minimum to compensate the two communities whose lands it seeks to enter-Shintuya and Puerto Luz, at the eastern and western ends of the seismic lines, respectively-and the Amarakaeri reserve’s governing council, known as the Administrative Contract Executive (ECA). Hunt has no deal with Puerto Luz, and a tentative deal with the ECA is now in question.

“Laws are being systematically ignored by the company and the government,” Corisepa charges. “The Peruvian state has a hydrocarbon policy that violates the rights of indigenous communities. This is what the Amazon uprising was about.”

*

At a September 13 meeting at FENAMAD’s Puerto Maldonado office, leaders from the 10 communities bordering the Amarakaeri reserve met privately to hash out their position, then invited three Hunt Oil representatives to receive their declaration. The atmosphere in the small thatched-roof conference room was tense.

Three communities, Shintuya, Puerto Luz, and Diamante, dissented from the decision to issue a declaration opposing the project. Nonetheless, the joint statement from FENAMAD and the ECA opposing the Hunt-Repsol presence in the reserve demanded that “this decision be respected by the state as well as the said companies.”

Anoshka, a Harakmbut leader from the community of Masenawa who is also a popular singer on the local cumbia circuit, gave the most impassioned statement. “I plead with you from my heart to respect our desire,” she said, directly addressing the Hunt representatives. “A majority of our communities have decided no. The conflicts you are sowing among us will not succeed, but you are already causing damage to our communities.”

Speaking of the Amarakaeri reserve’s management plan ostensibly drawn up with input from the 10 communities, she added: “The master plan said the communities favor the oil company. This is a lie and we will never accept this.”

The master plan, drawn up by the government natural-resources agency, is strongly contested. Although the ECA signed off on it, many Harakmbut charge the communities were not informed of last-minute changes that afforded oil companies easier access to resource exploitation in the most sensitive area of the reserve. Also at issue is the plan’s “recommendation” that the ECA accept any hydrocarbon contracts that the state permits in the reserve.

FENAMAD is especially concerned about the status of the high jungle in the south of the reserve, near the border with Cuzco region, which protects the watersheds of several tributaries of the Río Madre de Dios that run through the reserve. FENAMAD argues that under Peru’s Water Law, this area should be a strict protection zone, which would bar resource exploitation there. Instead, it was reclassified as a zona silvestre, affording a lower level of protection.

Equally controversial is the environmental-impact study produced for the Hunt project by the Peruvian firm Demus. In April, Demus workers in the community of Barranco Chico were confronted by local residents armed with clubs, who chased them from their lands. FENAMAD challenged the impact study before the Mines and Energy Ministry as what Corisepa calls a “plagiarism”-basically a cut-and-paste job from earlier studies elsewhere in the Amazon. Nonetheless, the ministry accepted it in June.

Hunt workers may be the next to be physically confronted. At the end of the meeting, Iviche announced that if Hunt doesn’t withdraw from the reserve, the communities are prepared to carry out a desalojo-eviction.

*

Silvana lay, a forestry engineer who serves as Hunt’s director of environmental health and safety for the Lot 76 project, defended the company’s position in comments outside the meeting at the FENAMAD office.

“We weren’t going to come in until the master plan was approved,” she said. “We waited two years, and during that period we met with the communities and gave information. We are working in the part where we are allowed to work under the rules that were put in the plan. The last thing we want is a dangerous situation for our workers or the communities.”

While the ECA did not have to sign off on the impact statement, Lay points out that public hearings on the study were held in the village of Salvación. “We held workshops with the communities on whose lands we are going to work, with the ECA invited.”

Lay insists that Hunt, in contrast to many resource companies in Peru, is committed to playing by the rules. “We have the [impact statement] approved. We have the master plan approved. We did workshops with the communities-all this before we started our work. We have the signatories of everybody saying the work can go ahead-within the rules, of course. And then we received a call saying the work cannot go ahead.”

She points out that the $380,000 offered in compensation to the ECA is nearly 25% of the Amarakaeri reserve’s five-year budget. It is now in question whether the ECA will accept this money. She said the $30,000 pledged to Shintuya is forthcoming, and that Hunt will stay off of Puerto Luz community’s lands until a compensation deal is finalized. Hunt’s overall budget for the exploration project is $17 million, she said.

Lay asserted that the Hunt contract is in the best interests of the communities. “They can use that money to police the reserve against illegal logging and mining. The illegal exploitation is the greatest threat to the reserve, while the media and government are checking up on us. We are a good opportunity for the reserve.”

FENAMAD attorney Milton Mercado rejects Lay’s portrayal. “The ECA has never signed any document allowing Hunt in the reserve,” he said. While the master plan allows oil exploitation in a general sense-with approval by the National Service of Protected Areas-it makes no reference to the Hunt contract. And this provision was added above the protests of the communities, he added.

“The only consultation has been with Shintuya and Puerto Luz,” Mercado said. Consultation is mandated by the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, to which Peru is a signatory. The principle is also enshrined in Article 6 of Peru’s constitution.

Mercado sees a hopeful precedent in a February ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal, Peru’s highest court, in a case concerning Lot 103-which includes the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area, a high jungle that protects the headwaters of important rivers in northern San Martín region. Citing potential damage to aquifers, the tribunal ruled against a consortium including Repsol, Petrobras, and Occidental Petroleum, ordering a halt to exploration in the reserve until a master plan is in place.

FENAMAD’s case against Hunt likewise focuses on the issue of protecting aquifers. But Mercado points out that it is the first in the history of Peru to rest on lack of consultation with indigenous communities-and a favorable ruling would be precedent-setting.

*

Almost all of the Madre de Dios region is divided into hydrocarbon exploration lots. Sapet, a Peruvian venture of China National Petroleum, has a license for Lots 113 and 111-the former covering the Reserve for Peoples in Voluntary Isolation, and the latter actually covering the town of Puerto Maldonado. The company has pledged not to explore in the reserve, for the moment at least. Lot 157, on unprotected lands to the east of the large protected areas, is currently suspended following the “Petrogate” scandal, in which officials are accused of kickbacks in the granting of concessions to Norwegian company Discover Petroleum.

These medium-sized firms are clearly viewed as an advance guard for the industry majors, who mostly abandoned operations in the Peruvian Amazon because of instability in the 1990s-and who García openly hopes to woo back.

Shell Oil explorations in area in the mid-1980s took a grave toll in disease on the recently contacted Yaminahua people in the north of Madre de Dios, who now have a titled community in neighboring Ucuyali region.

A decade later, a consortium including ExxonMobil and Elf began exploration in Lot 78-covering nearly the same territory as the contemporary Lot 76. This lot was reorganized in subsequent years as the communities around the Amarakaeri reserve were being titled.

In addition to hydrocarbons, timber is being massively exploited in Madre de Dios, mostly by Peruvian firms for export to the United States and China. There are legal concessions on state land in the largely unprotected eastern half of Madre de Dios-as well as much illegal exploitation in the protected areas.

Gold is next in line in the local resource boom. Legal placer and dredge mining concessions operate on the region’s rivers. But illegal and highly destructive hydraulic mining goes on in pirate operations.

A hydroelectric project is pending on the Río Inambari, with the Brazilian firm Odebrecht likely to get the contract. The Inter-Oceanic Highway linking Brazil’s Atlantic coast with Peru’s Pacific is also under construction through Madre de Dios.

This matrix of development interests could make the frontier zone of Madre de Dios a very different place in a few short years-and many young indigenous people fear what the future will bring. Wili Corisepa, a young Harakmbut from Shintuya who works with FENAMAD, said: “In the time of the missionaries, in the time of the rubber, of the timber, and now the oil, they all lied to us. It is the same person wearing a different mask.”

Bill Weinberg is author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso, 2000) and editor of the website World War 4 Report (ww4report.com). Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

Copyright © 2009 NACLA

On the 18th of February 2010, the Peruvian government signed an agreement to sell energy to Brasil for the duration of 30 year.

Inambari Dam is the first in a list of Dams that would be built to supply the energy to Brasil.

From http://indigenouspeoplesissues.com we learn-

“Both governments speak of a total of 15 dams to be built with Brazilian technology to meet the market. According to the minister of Mines and Energy of Brazil, Edison Lobao, this production could reach 20 thousand MW.

The Agreement for the Supply of Electricity to Peru and Export Surplus in Brazil that will last 30 years is ready and about to be signed.

Inambari be the first of these six plants already planned. A project economic and energy front. Until today the Peruvian Amazon had never seen any work of this size. Inambari will be the largest hydro plant in Peru, the fifth of South America, with its 41000 hectares of flooded area would form the second largest lake in the country, second only to the very lake Titicaca.”

Talking about numbers… Most numbers concerning the Dam are now on 46000 hectares of forest that would be flooded. The last number Brack gave about Mines forestation was 18000 Hectares… not that it makes it any better…
Bank Information Centre is giving us a further look into the horror-

“The Inambari Hydroelectric Center would be the largest in Peru and the fifth largest in Latin America, requiring an investment of 4 billion dollars, with an installed generation capacity of 2000 MW. The dam will be constructed under a framework agreement signed by the governments of Peru and Brazil in April 2009 for the construction of six hydroelectric dams in Peru. 　

The direct benefits to Peru would essentially be in the form of income from energy exported to Brazil. The bilateral agreement states that part of the energy would be for national consumption, however currently, no information is available regarding percentages of energy generated for export and energy for internal consumption.

Among the possible impacts of the project, according to ECSA Engineers, the company in charge of the EIA for the project, the dam’s reservoir would flood 161Km of the Interoceanic Highway as well as 65 communities in the departments of Puno, Cuzco and Madre de Dios that would have to be relocated and compensated. Additional impacts include those typical of dams in the Amazon, including affectation of flora　and fauna, interruption of fish migratory routes, impacts on the flow and navigability of the river, among others. The final EIA of the project is expected to be released by ECSA Engineers in early 2010. “

Bank Information Centre is giving much more details and maps, so do pay it a visit.

It is also telling us-

“There is a sole article concerning the environment is very vague: “Art.9 Sustainable Development. All activities within the agreement will be carried out respecting the sustainable use of natural resources and environmental conservation,…”　Previously, those responsible for drafting the agreement received a series of recommendations from civil society organizations and professionals, which were not included.”

Arequipa: miners speak of six dead and several disappearing
They demand that a high commision would be formed in manage of the situation.

The deaths of the 6 informal miners in Chala (Arequipa), occurred during the “indefinite strike”. The miners fear that the number of deaths would increase. According to the same demonstrators at least 6 others have disappeared.
(From Peru21 this morning)

The miners are taking to the streets of various cities, in reaction to the new Law by the minister of Environment, Antonio Brack whom On January 31, 2010, passed a law that forbids mining in different areas in Peru.

 
Around 1000 miners and their family have occupied the Plaza de Armas (the Square of Arms) of the jungle city Puerto Maldonado, Peru, today, the 4^th of April, at noon.

The miners taking to the streets of Puerto Maldonado is the first of, possibly, many days protest, in reaction to the new law by the minister of Environment, Antonio Brack whom On January 31, 2010, passed a law that forbids mining in several parts within the State of the Madre de Dios.

The law would force the mining into designated areas. Miners would have to form co-operative (become formal miners) and the ways they are mining would be controlled. They would have to perform certain tasks in order to restore the environment they have destroyed (“replant trees after they finish mining” I was told by a local writer, whose brother is a miner), and of course… they would have to pay taxes.

No more unofficial mining. No more small independent activities everywhere. The result such changes of would be that whole villages, placed on the “wrong” part of the map would be left without a source of an income. The new law, BTW, would do little damage, if not Much Good, to the major mining companies.

once upon a time there was a jungle ( mongabay.com )

According to the local newspaper Mi Fontera, Whose reporter´s voice and the voice of the minister are mixing in a confusing harmony, 18,000 hectares of jungle have been cut down for the sake of informal mining (gold) and 400,000 hectares of Jungle are contaminated with Mercury.

The Newspaper is quoting the minister (starting with a ´start quote´ mark but without a ´quote end´ mark),”The region of Madre de Dios is The region in the world with the highest bio diversity, something that the informal miners do not understand or just do not wish to understand.

the power of Love

The plan of the miners is to strike indefinitely until the government repeals the law, and the government has already said they will not drop the law. Once a couple weeks go by and no food is able to reach Puerto, inflation will take over and people will have to pay exorbitant prices just to eat and drink clean water.

Speaking of water, Madre de Dios has hardly any clean water, all is contaminated with Mercury from the gold mining (an interesting link about mercury contamination (and gold) from the journal Today´s Chemist http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/tcaw/10/i03/html/03willis.html . Another, more confusing blog is my own http://naturesong.wordpress.com )

And you drink it all in your ayahuasca, or is it aluminum from the pot the shaman uses?

“Here is a story. I am drinking ayahuasca. Suddenly I find myself standing in the entry hallway of a large house in the suburbs, facing the front door. The floor of the hallway is tiled, like many places in the ayahuasca world. There is a large staircase behind me, leading to the second floor; there are large ceramic pots on either side of the entrance way. I open the front door and look out at a typical suburban street—cars parked at the curb, traffic going by, a front lawn, trees along the curb. Standing at the door is a dark woman, perhaps in her forties, her raven hair piled on her head, thin and elegant, beautiful, dressed in a red shift with a black diamond pattern. She silently holds out her right hand to me. On her hand is a white cylinder, about three inches long, part of the stem of a plant, which she is offering to me.”

Extensively researched, wonderfully written, filled with anecdotes and stories from a wide variety of curanderos, healers and peoples, along with comprehensive global, cultural and anthropological connections, observations and explorations, Singing to the Plants is a wild ride out and across the jungles of mestizo shamanism, simultaneously walking straight-faced and practical through “the disorderly landscape of the soul.”

Above all, the book is highly clarifying and seriously comprehensive. In recent years, as awareness of and engagement with shamanism, Amazonian shamanism, ayahuasca and other sacred plants has grown, sweeping across internet forums, websites, television, mainstream news, legal battles and so forth, a great deal of information, and misinformation, has piled up. Thankfully, Beyer wields an astounding mental machete, cutting a clear path through the tangled forest of cultural assumptions, allowing the down-to-earth daily reality of life in Upper Amazon to shine through. With Singing to the Plants, one is able to obtain a clear view of the bigger picture of mestizo life and shamanism in the Upper Amazon. — a view that has, until now, remained largely clouded.

Beyer points out:

“There is today considerable interest in shamanism in general, and in Upper Amazonian shamanism in particular, especially its use of plant hallucinogens; yet there is currently no readily accessible text giving general consideration to the unique features of Amazonian shamanism and its relationship to shamanisms elsewhere in the world. Moreover, many key texts, such as Luis Eduardo Luna’s 1986 dissertation, are out of print and almost impossible to find; and many important studies are in foreign languages, especially French.

We now know much more about shamanism than when Mircea Eliade published his famous overview in 1951. There is now a wider range of excellent ethnographies, including many of Amazonian peoples; debates within the field have sharpened an awareness of many of the assumptions that underlay the fieldwork of many decades ago. Indeed, we now know, too, much more about ethnobotany, hallucinations, and the actions of such substances as dimethyltryptamine. It is time to try to put some of this together.”

Much is indeed brought together in Singing to the Plants. A key element of the book concerns the notion, mostly contemporary/Western, which regards shamans and shamanism as useful for “healing, personal growth, empowerment, community, compassion … shamanism as a set of techniques for self realization, alternative healing, personal fulfillment, and success.”

However, Beyer describes: “It is soul, not spirit, that is the true landscape of shamanism. Shamans deal with sickness, envy, malice, betrayal, loss, conflict, failure, bad luck, hatred, despair, and death—including their own. The purpose of the shaman is to dwell in the valley of the soul—to heal what has been broken in the body and the community.”

Relating a story about the curandera Maria Sabina, Beyer continues to clarify this point: “While Wasson was climbing the mountain of spirit, seeing Sabina as a saint-like figure, a spiritual psychopomp, “religion incarnate,” María Sabina dwelled steadfastly in the valley of soul, healing the sick, vomiting for them, expelling their sickness, living her own difficult and messy life…”

Perhaps seeking shamanism for “personal growth” need not be entirely dismissed; like plants, each person must grow. This is not a bad thing. However, the course this growth may take can invoke healing, or induce harm. Of utmost importance then, is to acquire and share knowledge regarding the territory. One will not last very long in the jungle without a guide, and Singing to the Plants is a magnificent guide. The book, and its wonderful cast of characters, curanderos, animals, plants, spirits and stories presents honest, accurate, respectful, levelheaded and, at times, outrageously marvelous descriptions of the environments and climates of mestizo shamanism in the Upper Amazon. Central to this are various sections concerning gardening, cuisine, music, house building, boats, soccer, yucca, and so forth, which serve to extend the cultural and shamanic landscape in broad and practical contexts.

Having followed Steve Beyer’s blog for some time, finding it an amazing resource of stories and information regarding the jungle, mestizo culture, plants, ayahuasca and so forth, I had caught wind of his forthcoming “ayahuasca book” and so offered to engage in interview. That was several months ago. What has since emerged, in my opinion, goes far beyond the category of “ayahuasca book”, far beyond a personal account, a dusty study or a focus on one plant. It is a biography of people, place and spirits. A well woven story that encompasses, explores, slices open and politely offers up the strange, joyous, interconnected, inter-dependent, liminal, geodesic, complex, simple, tragic, dangerous, difficult, disciplined, messy and majestic world that is the Upper Amazon.

The richness, the colorful stories, the attention to detail, the tales of sorcerers and healers, the bridging and celebration of the mundane and the magical makes Singing to the Plants something akin to a Pablo Amaringo painting; a multi-layered vision to dive into, marvel and learn from.

It is a great pleasure to go a little bit deeper into the forest with Steve Beyer; cut through the tangle, set up camp, a fire, a cup of tea, lay back, eyes closed, leaves rattle, wind stirs, the singing begins.

MORGAN: Steve, how have the plants changed you?

STEVE: Life has changed me, and the sacred plants have been part of that. Also important have been my experiences in the wilderness, my training in jungle survival, my vision fasts in the desert, my family, and the joys and sorrows of a lengthening life in the human world. I don’t know whether it was drinking ayahuasca, or the magical phlegm my maestro ayahuasquero don Roberto Acho Jurema planted in my chest, or the gentle example of my plant teacher, doña María Tuesta Flores, working in my visions and my dreams, but I have changed. Far from the Amazon I have found that my arrogance and rage have drained away, and my heart has slowly opened. Entering into right relationship with people and spirits has happened spontaneously and miraculously.

MORGAN: How did you first come to meet with don Roberto and doña María?

STEVE: I was introduced to them by Howard Lawler, my good friend of many years, and one of my elder brothers on the medicine path. Howard is a herpetologist by training; he first came to the Amazon to study reptiles, and, like many others, fell in love with the jungle. He has lived in Peru now for decades, and he is a profoundly knowledgeable student of both the Andean and Amazonian healing traditions. He introduced me not only to doña María and don Roberto but also to my teachers don Antonio Barrera and don Rómulo Magin.

MORGAN: In terms of the culture and shamanism in the Upper Amazon, what, if anything, do you feel has been lost?

STEVE: Indigenous people all over the world are now embedded in global modernity, whether anyone likes it or not. There is no turning back, no way to disengage from the modern world, nowhere for indigenous peoples to retreat. And I think it is fair to say that indigenous people are, generally, worse off in many ways since this change than they were before.

Still, there are aspects of modernity — modern dentistry, for example — which could be of benefit to the Amazonian peoples if they had access to them. Indeed, modern technologies have already been appropriated in the Amazon for resistance to oppression — using video as a tool for perpetuating and reaffirming cultural values, or Google Earth to identify river discoloration caused by illegal mining operations, or GPS mapping to determine traditional land boundaries.

So what has been lost, I think, is a kind of innocence — a sense that isolation in the jungle offers protection from the challenges of modernity. The mestizo and indigenous peoples of the Upper Amazon are now compelled to engage with the modern world, to deal with natural resource exploitation, cultural appropriation, the temptations of ayahuasca tourism, establishing their identity in the contemporary nation-state, and new and challenging concepts of sickness and healing. I have no idea how this will turn out.

MORGAN: In some of my own experiences and relationship with ayahuasca, speaking about itself, and perhaps also of life in general, it has said to me “there are no rules, only guides” What do you feel about this? How do you feel this relates to the disciplines of shamanism, La Dieta for example, to Amazonian and mestizo traditions and to the waves and criticisms regarding “contemporary/Western” ayahuasca engagement?

STEVE: I was often told in the Upper Amazon that the difference between being a healer and a sorcerer lies in the exercise of self-control. This means self-control during la dieta and during the period immediately following coronación, when the apprentice must learn to control the magic darts received from the teacher. People in the Upper Amazon consider the darts and other pathogenic objects in a shaman’s phlegm to be spirits – autonomous and alive, sometimes with their own needs and desires, including a desire to kill. The healer is able to control these dangerous substances only by discipline and self-denial.

One may take this as a metaphor, but I believe that it is profoundly true. Our egos are as tricky and autonomous as magic darts. Our envidia, our foolish willingness to destroy relationships of trust and confidence with others, seems to flair up at the slightest provocation. Whether it is called a rule or a guide, once again we see the centrality of right relationship in indigenous thought, and the necessity for care and self-control in how we treat our relationships with the spirits and each other.

MORGAN: Regarding contemporary/Western knowledge and use of ayahuasca, much is being discussed and debated, especially regarding ayahuasca tourism. There is the notion that no such thing as ayahuasca tourism actually exists, that to be a tourist one watches from the sidelines, but never really gets involved. However, people who go to the jungle to be in ceremony are out there vomiting and defecating like everyone else and often those who go to the jungle under the pretence of tourism, come away somehow different. Additionally, many people feel called in one way or another, to the jungle by the ayahuasca itself. What do you feel is going on here?

STEVE: The plants speak in many different ways, I think. Sometimes people have life-changing experiences in the first session. And sometimes the sacred plants work slowly and subtly, in plant time. Sometimes the effects of ceremony may not be felt for months, and then the effects may not be visionary, but rather in stirrings of intention, new ways of looking at the world, a greater openness to wonder.

I am concerned that telling people they will “come away somehow different” from drinking ayahuasca may lead to unrealistic expectations, and to self-blame when those expectations are unmet. As I said, I think that, for many people, sacred plant medicines work slowly, over time, and sometimes subtly, so that one day you realize, to your surprise, that the world seems different – more wonderful, more miraculous, and filled with the spirits. For me, that is the lesson of the ayahuasca vision – not necessarily the healing of our perhaps irremediably flawed selves, but rather a way to see through the world to the wonders that were there all along, and we could not see.

It is true that some people feel called to the jungle. But it has been my experience that many people dislike the jungle, its humidity, its insects, its often imaginary dangers; they are afraid of it, and seek to be insulated from contact with it. That is one reason I put sections on such things as house construction, gardening, hunting, fishing, folklore, and daily life in Singing to the Plants. I wanted to provide a resource for people to learn about the cultural context – including material culture – within which the healing practices of the curanderos are embedded. If someone is in a tourist lodge in the jungle eating plantains and fish, I would like there to be a way for that person to learn where those plantains and fish came from – that they did not magically appear, but are the result of labor, knowledge, and insightful ecological management.

MORGAN: Have you ever considered a new word, phrase or way to describe so-called ayahuasca tourism or the global/urban/Western knowledge and use of ayahuasca?

STEVE: I think the term ayahuasca tourism has become pretty well established, and fits in with the established term drug tourism for the phenomenon globally. I am not sure we need a euphemism, since a lot of people who try ayahuasca are, in fact, tourists, for whom drinking ayahuasca is part of the tour package, along with viewing the macaws at a clay lick. Even people who come to the jungle for the sole purpose of drinking ayahuasca are often spiritual tourists, checking off one more item on their life list of transformative experiences. People drink ayahuasca while disengaged from the lives, culture, and struggles of the communities in which the medicine is embedded. But, once you step foot on this path, the sacred makes demands on you – for attention, for respect, for open-heartedness and right relationship – and these demands cannot be denied.

MORGAN: What are your thoughts regarding individuals in places like Canada, Europe, the United States, Australia and so forth, who are brewing and drinking ayahuasca on their own, in their own homes, outside the Amazon?

STEVE: I do not think that there is just one form of shamanism, or just one kind of shamanist culture. Ayahuasca shamanism in the Upper Amazon, for example, has always been voraciously eclectic. A generation ago, indigenous shamans spoke of radio waves and submarines; now they speak of laser beams and intergalactic spaceships. In the same way, I think we are seeing a resurgence of animist and shamanist forms in the industrialized world, some of which may survive and many of which will be transient.

But I think people need to be cautious, for two reasons. First, of course, ayahuasca is, in most places, illegal. It contains dimethyltryptamine, which is a Schedule I controlled substance in the United States and, under the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances, most other countries as well. Second, shamans in the Upper Amazon will tell you that embarking on this path alone, without the guidance and protection of an experienced shaman, is dangerous. The visionary world holds both allies and enemies, both meaning and peril. There should always be someone present who can call the protective spirits and sing the songs that guard the participants and guide their visions.

MORGAN: In what ways do you feel people can begin to reciprocate, share the process and build right relationship with these plants, peoples and the shamanism surrounding it?

STEVE: When foreigners come to the Amazon for healing, they often carry their own culturally embedded notions of the causes and resolution of suffering. Some shamans adopt the concepts and language of these clients, some for commercial reasons, some out of a genuine desire to communicate. Sadly, this process appears to be largely one way. I just do not see most foreigners adopting the complex, tragic, and ambivalent views on healing and sickness that lie at the roots of ayahuasca shamanism in the Upper Amazon.

I don’t think that we can view shamanism in the Upper Amazon through the lens of some popular construct of what shamanism is all about, as benevolent, nurturing, and safe. I do not think we should ignore the dark and deep aspects of this tradition, paint it in bright and soothing colors, and rob it of its richness and ambivalence.

All we can do, I think, is to ask ourselves how the sacred plants want us to live, how we can walk this medicine path in a sacred way, in right relationship.

MORGAN: Recently, I had a long conversation with the ayahuasca and the spirits and was told “don’t worry about ayahuasca” with a kind of nod and wink to the contemporary awareness and use of ayahuasca. This was accompanied by two things; an image of someone trying not to laugh, as though they know something you don’t, like a practical joke about to reach its punch line, and a vision of a “David and Goliath” scene. Except, behind the Goliath stood an immense, wild, interconnected entity of plants and spirits and energy. Considering this, and such things as Dennis McKenna’s message; “You monkeys only think you’re running things”, to what degree do you feel the plants and the spirits are the forces in charge (or forces to be reckoned with) on this planet?

STEVE: I personally am very micropolitical. In my own work as a peacemaker and community builder, I seek to institute change at the most local possible level, in schoolrooms, church basements, community clinics, and youth detention centers. So my thinking about plants and spirits is micropolitical as well. To me, Dennis’s message is a personal one, that has to do with giving up ego, control, and the delusion of power. The question that the plants have asked me is this: Are you willing to give up ego, hierarchy, power, dignity, self-importance, moral superiority? Are you willing to give up control, to hand yourself over to the process? Are you willing to see the world as miraculous and filled with spirits?

I think the plants love us. I have no idea why. We certainly have done nothing — at least recently – to deserve it. I think that they want us to be human beings again.

MORGAN: Ayahuasca is often about death, whether it be the healing of an illness, traveling to the land of the dead, “death as a doorway”, speaking with ancestors and so forth. Considering that we are living on, and struggling with, a planet that is regarded as being in its death throes; what role do you feel ayahuasca and the plants play in this respect? Have the plants suggested to you anything concerning the life, death or afterlife of the planet?

STEVE: The plants teach right relationship – with our bodies, our communities, our planet, and ourselves. My own focus has been on what Arthur Kleinman calls local moral worlds, resistance in microcontexts. I am interested in the healing of the suffering human person who seeks out the curandero for relief of pain, sickness, sorrow, bad luck. The lived experience of suffering – the misery that comes of poverty, inequality, and hopelessness – is, I think, both moral commentary and political performance. There is no doubt a need to think about the planet. But grand narratives about our global fate, in my opinion, too often disparage what Kleinman calls “the personal pains and distress that sick persons bring to shamans, which shamans try to cure.”

MORGAN: Singing to the Plants covers an astonishing amount of territory. At this point, now that the book is released, is there anything you feel you didn’t discuss, any avenue left unexplored, a story left untold, or something newly discovered you would have loved to include?

STEVE: Given the publishing schedule, it is impossible for the book to be entirely up-to-date on all the latest legal developments. And I have been thinking about similarities and differences among the sacred plants and fungi – peyote and ayahuasca and teonanácatl, for example – in their ceremonial contexts, and about the cognitive psychology of visionary experiences generally. If I were writing the book today, too, I would probably have a lot more to say about the way in which ayahuasca — or at least the idea of ayahuasca — is penetrating American popular culture. From time to time I write down my current thoughts in the Singing to the Plants blog.

MORGAN: Picture this: You’re walking through the deep jungle, all of a sudden you find all the ingredients you need to whip up some of your favorite jungle cuisine, what would you make?

STEVE: Wow. Well, we could begin with a nice palm heart salad. If we have a frying pan, let’s cook up an appetizer of suri, palmetto beetle grubs, along with some wild garlic. Then a fish course — paiche, the largest freshwater fish in the world, or the dorado catfish, prepared as a patarashca, wrapped in the large leaves of the bijao palm and placed on the hot coals of our fire. I am fond of the large rodents, so perhaps we could roast some agouti or capybara over the fire, and fry up some plantains in the fat left in the pan from the suri. On the other hand, you might prefer tapir or peccary or deer, or even turtle soup. Whichever we choose, we can garnish the dish with some sliced boiled panguana eggs. And for desert we can have just about any kind of tropical fruit imaginable. Then we can sit back with full bellies and tell stories all night.

Interview by Morgan Maher

Stephan Beyer holds a law degree and doctorates in both religious studies and psychology. He lived for a year and a half in a Tibetan monastery in the Himalayas, and has published three books on Buddhism and Tibetan language and religion. He has been a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the University of California–Berkeley, and Graduate Theological Union.

For twenty-five years, he was a lawyer and litigator at a major international law firm in Chicago. He has been a wilderness guide and a peacemaker and community builder. He studied wilderness survival among the indigenous peoples of North and South America, and sacred plant medicine with traditional herbalists in North America and curanderos in the Upper Amazon, where he received coronación by banco ayahuasquero don Roberto Acho Jurama.

He has worked with ayahuasca and other sacred plants in the Amazon, peyote in ceremonies of the Native American Church, and huachuma in Peruvian mesa rituals; and has undertaken numerous four-day and four-night solo vision fasts in Death Valley, the Pecos Wilderness, and the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico. He is a member of the Society of Shamanic Practitioners, American Herbalists Guild, Foundation for Shamanic Studies, Association for Transpersonal Psychology, and Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness. He has served as an editor of the Journal of Shamanic Practice and is a contributing editor of Ayahuasca.com

Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon, by Stephan Beyer, is published by the University of New Mexico Press and available via Amazon.com. Steve’s blog, and the website for the book, is at www.singingtotheplants.com.

In that time, I have written extensively on the botany, chemistry, and pharmacology of ayahuasca, on its potential therapeutic uses, and on the need for more, and more rigorous, scientific and clinical investigations of this remarkable plant decoction. Working with colleagues such as Dr. Grob, my good friends Jace Callaway and Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna in Finland, my mentor Dr. Neil Towers, my late and beloved brother Terence, Dr. Glaucus de Souza Brito, and others, to investigate the myriad mysteries of ayahuasca, has been as rich and rewarding an experience as any scientist could ever hope for.

Partly as a result of our collective efforts, over the last few decades ayahuasca has become one of the most thoroughly studied of the traditional shamanic plant hallucinogens. We now have a firm understanding of the plant species that are utilized in its preparation, including the diverse pharmacopoeia of ayahuasca admixture plants, a shamanic technology unto itself that begs additional investigation. We understand the chemistry of the active constituents of its primary botanical components, and have better insight into its remarkable synergistic pharmacology.

We have identified potential therapeutic applications for ayahuasca and the role that it may some day find in healing the physical and spiritual wounds of individuals, if it is ever afforded its rightful place in medical practice. Ethnographically, my colleagues and I have made contributions to an understanding of the central role that ayahuasca already has in the context of Amazonian shamanism and ethnomedicine. We have described, and written about, its status as a window into the sacred cosmology of magic, witchcraft, transcendent experience, and healing that permeates and defines the practices of Mestizo ethnomedicine.

The visionary paintings of Peruvian shaman and artist Pablo Amaringo, brought so beautifully to the attention of the world by Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna, has helped to make that tradition accessible to many who would otherwise have seen it (if they were aware of it at all) as alien, exotic, and incomprehensible. To an extent, our work has shed some small light on the more contemporary role of ayahuasca as the sacramental vehicle of syncretic religious movements that originated in Brasil and now are reaching out globally, if incrementally, to embrace a sick and wounded world that desperately yearns for the healing that this mind/body/spirit medicine can offer.

The story of ayahuasca, and our evolving understanding of its place in the world, and of its significance for medicine, pharmacology, ethnobotany, and shamanic studies, is far from over, and in fact, it may have just begun. I would like to believe that is the case. But for the purposes of this contribution, rather than submit yet another dense and lengthy review on the botany, chemistry, pharmacology, &c., of ayahuasca, I have chosen to adopt a broader perspective, and to indulge in some reflections, and speculations on the past and future of ayahuasca of the sort that a scientist, probably mercifully, rarely shares with his colleagues or the larger world.

To those readers who may wish for my more usual nuts-and-bolts approach to the subject, I call attention to my recent review in the journal Pharmacology and Therapeutics (McKenna, 2004). In addition, a complete list of all of “my” publications on ayahuasca is appended to the end of this article; and I use the term “my” advisedly because these publications represent the work and creativity of many people with whom I’ve been privileged to collaborate over the years. They would not exist without them.

On a personal level, ayahuasca has been for me both a scientific and professional continuing carrot, and a plant teacher and guide of incomparable wisdom, compassion, and intelligence. My earliest encounters with ayahuasca were experiential; only later did it become an object of scientific curiosity, sparked in part by a desire to understand the mechanism, the machineries, that might underlie the profound experiences that it elicited.

As a young man just getting started in the field of ethnopharmacology, ayahuasca seemed to me more than worthy of a lifetime of scientific study; and so it has proven to be. Pursuing an understanding of ayahuasca has led to many exotic places that I would never have visited otherwise, from the jungles of the Amazon Basin to the laboratory complexes of the National Institute of Mental Health and Stanford; it has led to the formation of warm friendships and fruitful collaborations with many colleagues who have shared my curiosity about the mysteries of this curious plant complex.

These collaborations, and more importantly, these friendships, continue, as does the quest for understanding. Though there have been detours along the way, always, and inevitably, they have led back to the central quest. Often, after the fact, I have seen how those apparent detours were not so far off the path after all, as they supplied some insight, some skill, or some experience, that in hindsight proved necessary to the furtherance of the quest.

Just as ayahuasca has been for me personally something of a Holy Grail, as it has been for many others, I have the intuition that it may have a similar role with respect to our entire species. Anyone who is personally experienced with ayahuasca is aware that it has much to teach us; there is incredible wisdom and intelligence there. And to my mind, one of the most profound and humbling lessons that ayahuasca teaches – one that we thick-headed humans have the hardest time grasping – is the realization that “you monkeys only think you’re running things.”

Though I state it humorously, here and in other talks and writings, it is nonetheless a profound insight on which may depend the very survival of our species, and our planet. Humans are good at nothing if not hubris, arrogance, and self-delusion. We assume that we dominate nature; that we are somehow separate from, and superior to, nature, even as we set about busily undermining and wrecking the very homeostatic global mechanisms that have kept our earth stable and hospitable to life for the last four and a half billion years. We devastate the rainforests of the world; we are responsible for the greatest loss of habitat and the greatest decimation of species since the asteroid impacts of the Permian-Triassic boundary, 250 million years ago; we rip the guts out of the earth and burn them, spewing toxic chemicals into the atmosphere; at the same time we slash and burn the woody forests that may be the only hope for sequestration of the carbon dioxide that is rapidly building to dangerous and possibly uncontrollable levels. For the first time in the history of our species, and indeed of our planet, we are forced to confront the possibility that thoughtless and unsustainable human activity may be posing a real threat to our species’ survival, and possibly the survival of all life on the planet.

And suddenly, and literally, “out of the Amazon,” one of the most impacted parts of our wounded planet, ayahuasca emerges as an emissary of trans-species sentience, to bring this lesson: You monkeys only think you’re running things. In a wider sense, the import of this lesson is that we need to wake up to what is happening to us and to the planet. We need to get with the program, people. We have become spiritually bereft and have been seduced by the delusion that we are somehow important in the scheme of things. We are not.

Our spiritual institutions have devolved into hollow shells, perverted to the agendas of rapacious governments and fanatic fundamentalisms, no longer capable of providing balm to the wounded spirit of our species; and as the world goes up in flames we benumb ourselves with consumerism and mindless entertainment, the decadent distractions of gadgets and gewgaws, the frantic but ultimately meaningless pursuits of a civilization that has lost its compass. And at this cusp in human history, there emerges a gentle emissary, the conduit to a body of profoundly ancient genetic and evolutionary wisdom that has long abided in the cosmologies of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon who have guarded and protected this knowledge for millennia, who learned long ago that the human role is not to be the master of nature, but its stewards, Our destiny, if we are to survive, is to nurture nature and to learn from it how to nurture ourselves and our fellow beings. This is the lesson that we can learn from ayahuasca, if only we pay attention.

I find it both ironic, and hopeful, that within the last 150 years, and particularly in the last half of the 20th century, ayahuasca has begun to assert its presence into human awareness on a global scale. For millennia it was known only to indigenous peoples who have long since understood and integrated what it has to teach us. In the 19th century it first came to the attention of a wider world as an object of curiosity in the reports of Richard Spruce and other intrepid explorers of the primordial rainforests of South America; in the mid-20th century Schultes and others continued to explore this discovery and began to focus the lens of science on the specifics of its botany, chemistry, and pharmacology (and, while necessary, this narrow scrutiny perhaps overlooked some of the larger implications of this ancient symbiosis with humanity). At the same time, ayahuasca escaped from its indigenous habitat and made its influence felt among certain non-indigenous people, representatives of “greater” civilization.

To these few men and women, ayahuasca provided revelations, and they in turn responded (in the way that humans so often do when confronted with a profound mystery) by founding religious sects with a messianic mission; in this case, a mission of hope, a message to the rest of the world that despite its simplicity was far ahead of its time: that we must learn to become the stewards of nature, and by fostering, encouraging, and sustaining the fecundity and diversity of nature, by celebrating and honoring our place as biological beings, as part of the web of life, we may learn to become nurturers of each other. A message quite different, and quite anathema, to the anti-biological obsessions of most of the major world “religions” with their preoccupation with death and suffering and their insistence on the suppression of all spontaneity and joy.

Such a message is perceived as a great threat by entrenched religious and political power structures, and indeed, it is. It is a threat to the continued rape of nature and oppression of peoples that is the foundation of their power. Evidence that they understand this threat and take it seriously is reflected by the unstinting and brutal efforts that “civilized” ecclesiastical, judicial, and political authorities have made to prohibit, demonize, and exterminate the shamanic use of ayahuasca and other sacred plants ever since the Inquisition and even earlier.

But the story is not yet over. Within the last 30 years, ayahuasca, clever little plant intelligence that it is, has escaped from its ancestral home in the Amazon and has found haven in other parts of the world. With the assistance of human helpers who heard the message and heeded it, ayahuasca sent its tendrils forth to encircle the world. It has found new homes, and new friends, in nearly every part of the world where temperatures are warm and where the ancient connections to plant-spirit still thrive, from the islands of Hawaii to the rainforests of South Africa, from gardens in Florida to greenhouses in Japan. The forces of death and dominance have been outwitted; it has escaped them, outrun them.

There is now no way that ayahuasca can ever be eliminated from the earth, short of toxifying the entire planet (which, unfortunately, the death culture is working assiduously to accomplish). Even if the Amazon itself is leveled for cattle pasture or burned for charcoal, ayahuasca, at least, will survive, and will continue to engage in its dialog with humanity. And encouragingly, more and more people are listening.

It may be too late. I have no illusions about this. Given that the curtain is now being rung down on the drunken misadventure that we call human history, the death culture will inevitably become even more brutal and insane, flailing ever more violently as it sinks beneath the quick sands of time. Indeed, it is already happening; all you have to do is turn on the nightly news.

Will ayahuasca survive? I have no doubt that ayahuasca will survive on this planet as long as the planet remains able to sustain life. The human time frame is measured in years, sometimes centuries, rarely, in millennia. Mere blinks when measured against the evolutionary time scales of planetary life, the scale on which ayahuasca wields its influence. It will be here long after the governments, religions, and political power structures that seem today so permanent and so menacing have dissolved into dust. It will be here long after our ephemeral species has been reduced to anomalous sediment in the fossil record. The real question is, will we be here long enough to hear its message, to integrate what it is trying to tell us, and to change in response, before it is too late?

Ayahuasca has the same message for us now that it has always had, since the beginning of its symbiotic relationship with humanity. Are we willing to listen? Only time will tell.

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Published on Ayahuasca.com with express permission of Dennis McKenna.

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Bibliography

McKenna, Dennis J. (2004) Clinical investigations of the therapeutic potential of Ayahuasca: Rationale and regulatory challenges. Pharmacology and Therapeutics. 102:111-129.
Dennis J. McKenna (1999) Ayahuasca: an ethnopharmacologic history. In: R. Metzner, (ed) Ayahuasca: Hallucinogens, Consciousness, and the Spirit of Nature. Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York.
Callaway, J. C., D. J. McKenna, C. S. Grob, G. S. Brito, L. P. Raymon, R.E. Poland, E. N. Andrade, E. O. Andrade, D. C. Mash (1999) Pharmacokinetics of Hoasca alkaloids in Healthy Humans. Journal of Ethnopharmacology. 65:243-256.
McKenna, DJ, JC Callaway, CS Grob (1999). The scientific investigation of ayahuasca: A review of past and current research. Heffter Review of Psychedelic Research 1:
Callaway, J. C., L. P. Raymon, W. L. Hearn, D. J. McKenna, C. S. Grob, G. S. Brito, D. C. Mash (1996) Quantitation of N,N-dimethyltryptamine and harmala alkaloids in human plasma after oral dosing with Ayahuasca. Journal of Analytical Toxicology 20: 492-497
C. S. Grob, D. J. McKenna, J. C. Callaway, G. S. Brito, E. S. Neves, G. Oberlender, O. L. Saide, E. Labigalini, C. Tacla, C. T. Miranda, R. J. Strassman, K. B. Boone (1996) Human pharmacology of hoasca, a plant hallucinogen used in ritual context in Brasil: Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease. 184:86-94. McKenna, DJ (1996)
James C. Callaway, M. M. Airaksinen, Dennis J. McKenna, Glacus S. Brito, & Charles S. Grob (1994) Platelet serotonin uptake sites increased in drinkers of ayahuasca. Psychopharmacology 116: 385-387
Dennis J. McKenna, L. E. Luna, & G. H. N. Towers, (1995) Biodynamic constituents in Ayahuasca admixture plants: an uninvestigated folk pharmacopoeia. In: von Reis, S., and R. E. Schultes (eds). Ethnobotany: Evolution of a Discipline. Dioscorides Press, Portland
Dennis J. McKenna, & G. H. N. Towers, (1985) On the comparative ethnopharmacology of the Malpighiaceous and Myristicaceous hallucinogens. J. Psychoactive Drugs, 17:35-39.
Dennis J. McKenna, & G. H. N. Towers, (1984), Biochemistry and pharmacology of tryptamine and ß-carboline derivatives: A minireview. J. Psychoactive Drugs, 16:347-358.
Dennis J. McKenna, G. H. N. Towers, & F. S. Abbott (1984) Monoamine oxidase inhibitors in South American hallucinogenic plants: Tryptamine and ß-carboline constituents of Ayahuasca. J. of Ethnopharmacology 10:195-223.
Dennis J. McKenna, G. H. N. Towers, & F. S. Abbott (1984) Monoamine oxidase inhibitors in South American hallucinogenic plants Pt. II: Constituents of orally active Myristicaceous hallucinogens. J. of Ethnopharmacology 12:179-211.
Dennis J. McKenna & G. H. N. Towers (1981) Ultra-violet mediated cytotoxic activity of ß-carboline alkaloids. Phytochemistry 20:1001-1004

“Ground zero” of Ayahuasca usage is the northwestern region of the Amazon Basin where Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil come together (see red-outlined area on map). Close to 100% of indigenous ethnic groups here traditionally use Ayahuasca (and this also contains the centers of mestizo traditional usage, Iquitos and Pucallpa in Peru). Beyond that (see fuschia-outlined area on map) Ayahuasca is used by a large majority of the indigenous peoples. Ayahuasca is also used by several indigenous groups outside of this area of traditional usage: the Tsachila and Chachi of the northern coast of Ecuador, the Embera of western Colombia and the Choco of northwestern Colombia near the Panama border, and some Guarani groups in eastern Bolivia, which may have adopted Ayahuasca in modern times. (See light blue areas.)

Assigning an actual number to the Amazonian ethnic groups that use Ayahuasca is not a straightforward task, as it is often difficult to define whether two neighboring communities with similar customs and similar tongues constitute one ethnic group or two; Amazonian peoples themselves usually do not traditionally concern themselves with such definitions, as their traditional loyalties and identification have usually been to their own immediate village, and ethnic/tribal identity is a new concept that is developing in modern times as Amazonian peoples organize for their rights. Multiple variant names in the literature for the same groups adds to the difficulty of enumerating groups, and sometimes the same name being assigned to several different groups (like “Campa” for Ashaninka and Nomatsigenka, or “Napo Runa” for the distinct cultures of the Upper and Lower Napo River). But, as defined by language and common cultural characteristics, there are approximately 130 indigenous tribes in the outlined areas.

Ayahuasca use has been recorded either in past or present among the following groups. Alternative names and spellings with which they may be referenced in the literature are in parentheses, and locations are given so that they may be found on the following maps from ethnologue.com (extinct groups do not appear):
Northern Colombia
Southern Colombia
Ecuador
Northern Peru
Southern Peru
Bolivia
Brazil
Venezuela

Achuar (Achual, Achuara) – Ecuador / N.Peru
Amahuaca (Amenguaca, Sayacu) – S. Peru
Amuesha (Yanesha, Amuese, Amueixa, Amoishe, Amagues, Amage, Amaje, Amajo, Amuetamo) – S. Peru
Angutero (Ancutere, Pioje) – N. Peru (note 1)
Asháninka (Ashaninca, Campa) – S. Peru (note 2)
Ashéninka (Asheninca) – S. Peru (note 2)
Awajún (Aguaruna) – N. Peru
Awishiri – Peru (extinct)
Banihua (Baniwa) – Brazil / Venezuela
Barasana (Paneroa, Eduria, Edulia) – S. Colombia
Bora (Boro) – N. Peru / S. Colombia
Candoshi-Shapra (Kandoshi) – N. Peru
Capanahua (Kapanawa)- N. Peru
Carijona (Karijona, Carihona, Umawa, Hianacoto-Umaua) – S. Colombia
Cashibo-Cacataibo (Kashibo-Kakataibo) – N. Peru
Chachi (Cayapa, Kayapa) – Ecuador (note 3)
Chamicura (Chamikura) – N. Peru
Chasutino – Peru / Bolivia (exact location unidentified)
Chayavita (Chayahuita, Chayawita, Shayabit, Chawi, Tsaawi, Tshaahui, Tschhuito, Paranapura) – N. Peru
Chebero (Jebero, Xebero, Xihuila) – N. Peru
Choco (Choko) – Colombia (note 4) (note 3)
Cofán (Kofan, Kofane, A’i) – Ecuador / S. Colombia
Cocama-Cocamilla (Kokama, Huallaga, Pampadeque, Pandequebo, Ucayali, Xibitaoan) – N. Peru
Conibo – N. Peru (note 5)
Cubeo (Kubeo, Cuveo, Kobeua, Kubwa, Kobewa, Pamiwa, Hehenawa) – N. Colombia
Cuiba (Cuiva, Kuiva, Kuiba, Kwiba, Cuiba-Wámonae) – N. Colombia / Venezuela
Culina (Kulina) – S. Peru / Brazil
Desana (Desano, Wina, Boleka, Oregu, Kusibi) – S. Colombia / Brazil
Embera (Emperã, Eberã, Atrato, Baudó, Catrú, Embena, Eyabida, Chami) – N. Colombia (note 9) (note 3)
Ese’ejja (Chama) – Bolivia / S. Peru
Guahibo (Sikuani) – N. Colombia / Venezuela
Gwanana (Guanano, Wanana, Uanano, Kotiria, Anana, Kótedia) – N. Colombia
Guarani – Bolivia / Brazil (note 3) (note 6)
Harambket (Mashco, Amarakaire, Amarakaeri) – S. Peru
Hianakota-Umana – Brazil
Huambisa (Wambisa) – N. Peru
Hupda-Maku (Hupde) – Brazil / S. Colombia
Huni Kuin (Cashinahua) – S. Peru / Brazil
Ikito (Iquito, Iquita, Amacacore, Hamacore, Quiturran, Puca-Uma) – N. Peru
Inga – N. Colombia (note 7)
Ingano – N. Colombia (note 7)
Isconahua (Iscobaquebu) – N. Peru
Ixiamas Chama (Tacana) – Bolivia
Kabuvari – Brazil
Kacha’ – Peru (location unidentified)
Kamsá (Camsa, Sibundoy, Coche) – N. Colombia
Koreguaje (Coreguaje, Correguaje, Ko’reuaju, Caquetá, Chaocha Pai) – N. Colombia
Lamistas (Lamista, Lama) – N. Peru (note 7) (note
Machiguenga (Matsikenka, Matsigenga, Matsiganga, Mañaries) – S. Peru
Mai Huna – N. Colombia
Maku (Cacua) – S. Colombia
Makuna (Macuna, Buhagana, Yeba, Suroa, Tabotiro Jejea, Umua, Wuhána, Paneroa, Jepa-Matsi, Yepá-Mahsá) – S. Colombia
Marinahua – S. Peru (note 9)
Matses (Mayoruna, Morique) – N. Peru (note 10)
Mazan – Peru (extinct)
Menimehe – Colombia (apparently extinct)
Mojo (Mojos, Moxo, Moxos) – Bolivia
Muinane (Murui, Muinana, Muinani, Muename) – S. Colombia
Napo Runa, Upper (Quijos, Napo Kichwa, Awa Napo Runa, Quichuas de Tena) – Ecuador (note 7)
Napo Runa, Lower (Orellana Runa, Uku Napo Runa) – Ecuador, N. Peru
Nheengatu (Ngengatu, Waengatu, Lingua Geral) – S. Colombia / Brazil (note 11)
Nomatsiguenga (Nomatsigenka, Atiri)- S. Peru
Noanama – N. Colombia
Omagua (Pariana, Anapia, Macanipa, Kambeba, Yhuata, Umaua, Cambela, Cambeeba) – Ecuador / Peru (note 12)
Panobo – Peru (extinct)
Pastaza Runa (Canelos, Alama) – Ecuador (note 7)
Piapoko (Piapoco) – N. Colombia
Piaroa (Kuakua, Guagua, Quaqua) – N. Colombia / Venezuela
Pioche – Colombia (note 13)
Piro (Yine, Mashco Piro, Mashco, Cujareño, Simiranch) – S. Peru
Puinave (Puinabe) – N. Colombia
Secoya – Ecuador / Colombia / N. Peru
Sharanahua – S. Peru
Shetebo – N. Peru (note 14)
Shipibo-Conibo – N. Peru
Shiwiar – Ecuador / N. Peru (note 15)
Shuar (Shuara, Jivaro, Jibaro) – Ecuador / N. Peru
Siona – Ecuador / Colombia
Taiwano – S. Colombia (note 16)
Takana – Bolivia
Tamas – Brazil
Tanimuka (Tanimuca-Retuara) – N. Colombia
Tarianas – Brazil
Tatuyo (Pamoa, Oa, Tatutapuyo, Juna) – N. Colombia
Tikuna (Ticuna, Tukuna) – Brazil / S. Colombia
Tetete – Colombia / Ecuador (extinct)
Tsachila (Colorados) – Ecuador
Tukano (Tucano) – S. Colombia / Brazil
Waorani (Huaorani. Auca) – Ecuador
Witoto (Huitoto, Minika, Bue) – S. Colombia (note 2)
Yagua (Yahua, Llagua, Yegua, Yava, Nijyamïï Nikyejaada) – N. Peru
Yaminahua (Yaminawa, Jaminawá, Yuminahua, Yamanawa, Chitonahua) – S. Peru / Brazil
Yebasama – N. Colombia
Ye’kuana (Makiritari, Maquiritare) – Venezuela
Yora (Yura, Yuranahua, Yoranahua, Parquenahua, Nahua) – S. Peru
Záparo – Ecuador / N. Peru

(1) not on Ethnologue map, classified by Ethnologue as a subgroup of Secoya
(2) divided into various subgroup areas on Ethnologue map
(3) located outside of Amazon/Guiana Shield region
(4) some Choco live in Panama, but those are not known to use Ayahuasca
(5) today virtually merged with Shipibo, but some early literature treats them separately
(6) some Guarani live in Paraguay, but there are not known to use Ayahuasca
(7) speak a dialect of Amazonian Quechua
(8) identified on Ethnologue N. Peru map as Quechua, San Martin
(9) not on Ethnologue map, classified by Ethnologue as a subgroup of Sharanahua
(10) do not use Ayahuasca currently, but did at one time and have forgotten how, some now trying to recover it
(11) not an ethnic group, but a Tupinamba-based lingua franca used by various Indians of the upper Rio Negro, by some as their language; some of the groups known to use Nhengatu are Ayahuasca users
(12) although the Omaguas (once a major power on the lower Napo and Amazon headwaters) are nearly extinct, some Omagua words survive in icaros of mestizo curanderos of Iquitos
(13) classified as Siona on Ethnologue map, but consider themselves distinct from Siona
(14) not on Ethnologue map, classified by Ethnologue as a subgroup of Shipibo
(15) classified by Ethnologue as a dialect of Achuar
(16) not on Ethnologue map, classified by Ethnologue as a subgroup of Barasana

Some groups in the above list have become extinct since reports were made; some appear to have abandoned use of Ayahuasca under missionary pressure (or it has gone underground).

For the following indigenous tribes in the traditional geographical area of Ayahuasca use, no recorded data on Ayahuasca use could be found. However, many have been little studied or observed by outsiders, so absence of reports does not necessarily mean absence of use, and in some cases (as noted below) there are reports of Ayahuasca use among other groups that are neighboring and closely related linguistically and culturally. Data from forum members is very welcomed!

Achagua (Xagua) – N. Colombia (note 1)
Ajyíninka Apurucayali – S. Peru (note 4)
Andoke (Andoque) – N. Peru / S. Colombia (note 2)
Arabela (Chiripunu) – N. Peru (note 3)
Cabiyari (Cabiuarí, Cauyarí, Kauyarí, Cuyare, Kawillary) – S. Colombia
Cacua (Báda, Kákwa) – N. Colombia
Cahuarano – N. Peru
Caquinte – S. Peru (note 4)
Carabayo (Macusa) – S. Colombia (note 3)
Carapana (Mochda, Moxdoa, Karapaná, Karapano, Mextã) – N. Colombia
Curripaco (Kurripaco) – S. Colombia (note 5)
Guayabero (Jiw, Cunimía, Mítus, Mítua) – N. Colombia (note 6)
Huachipaeri – S. Peru (note 7)
Iñapari (Iñamari) – S. Peru
Macaguan (Macaguane, Hitnü) – N. Colombia (note 6)
Miraña – S. Colombia (note
Muniche (Otanave, Otanabe, Munichino, Munichi) – N. Peru
Nanti (Kogapakori) – S. Peru (note 9)
Ocaina – N. Peru (note 10)
Piratapuyo – S. Colombia
Pisabo (Pisagua, Pisahua) – N. Peru
Resigaro (Resigero) – N. Peru
Saliba – N. Colombia
Taushiro (Pinchi) – N. Peru
Tutapi (Orejon, Oregon, Orechon, Payagua, Mai Ja) – N. Peru (note 11)
Tuyuka – S. Colombia / Brazil
Waikino (Uaikena, Piratapuyo, Urubu-Tapuya) – N. Colombia
Waimaha – S. Colombia
Yari – S. Colombia
Yukuna (Matapi (Matapie) – S. Colombia
Yuruti – S. Colombia

(1) close relatives Piapoco reported to use Ayahuasca
(2) close relatives Tikuna reported to use Ayahuasca
(3) close relatives Zaparo reported to use Ayahuasca
(4) close relatives Ashaninka reported to use Ayahuasca
(5) close relatives Baniwa reported to use Ayahuasca
(6) close relatives Guahibo reported to use Ayahuasca
(7) close relatives Harambket reported to use Ayahuasca
(8) close relatives Bora reported to use Ayahuasca
(9) close relatives Machiguenga reported to use Ayahuasca
(10) close relatives Witoto reported to use Ayahuasca
(11) close relatives Tukano reported to use Ayahuasca

The only group in the “red zone” that appears not to have used Ayahuasca in the past or present is the Shimaco (aka Shimaku, Urarani, Itucali) (Alan Shoemaker, personal communication). There are reports specifically stating that the Yagua and Candoshi do not use Ayahuasca, but other reports that they do use Ayahuasca, so they have may learned from missionaries to conceal Ayahuasca from some outsiders.

Some indigenous names for Ayahuasca (most of these names apply to both the vine and the brew):

Tupi: caapi (note 1)

Hupda: carpi

Tikuna: cipo caapi

Desana: gahpi

Siona/ Secoya: yaje (note 2); ‘iko

Kofan: yaje; cofa; oofa

Karijona: yaje

Guanano: yaja

Tukano: kaji (note 3); kadana, kadana-pira

Yebasama: kaji

Makuna: ka-hee’, kahi ide

Yekuana: sipo, cipo; kahi

Kulina: tsipu (note 6); mado, mado bidada; rami-wetsem (note 9)

Shuar: natem, natema (with final a whispered)

Achuar: natem

Huambisa: datem

Awajún: datem

Ashaninka: kamarampi (note 4); hananeroca (note 5)

Yine: kamalampi

Machikenka: ka’maranpi, kama’rampi; wampu, wamp

Embera: pinde, pilde

Chachi : pindé; nape, nepe, nepi

Tsachila: pinde, pilde; napa, nepe, nepi

Choco: nape, nepe, nepi

Noanama: dapa

Waorani: mii, miiyagi

Shipibo: nishi; oni

Conibo: uni

Amahuaca: nixi; oni xuma

Cashinahua: nixi pae

Sharanahua: shuri (note 7); ondi; rambi, rame (note

Pando: shuri; undi; rambi (note 9)

Yaminahua: shori

Marinahua: rame (note 9)

Yagua: ramanuju

Mojo: mariri

Kubeo: mi-hi

Piro: totsha

Zaparo: iyona, iona

Guarani: jauma

Kamsa: biaxii

Guahibo: uipa

Barasana: (note 10)

Ingano: inde huasca (note 11)

Quechua: ayahuasca (also spelled ayawaska) (note 12)

Uncertain: cabi; xono; shillinto; jagubi; pitujiracu; cauupiri mariri; tiwaco mariri

(1) the root kaa or caa in Tupi means “plant.” Naranjo (1983) translates caapi as “leaf to make one exhale, i.e, become a spirit.”

(2) varieties include: yai-yajé; nea-yajé; horo-yajé;weki-yajé; wai-yajé or wahi-yaje; wati-yajé; weko-yajé; hamo-weko-yajé; beji-yajé; kwi-ku-yajé; kwaku-yaje; aso-yajé; kido-yajé; usebo-yajé; ga-tokama-yai-yajé; zi-simi-yajé; bi’-ã-yajé; sia-sewi-yaje; sese-yajé or sise-yajé (“wild pig yaje,” used for hunting); so’-om-wa-wa’i-yajé (“long-vine yaje”)

(3) varieties include: kaji-riama; mene’-kají-ma; yaiya-suána-kaji-ma; kají-vaibucuru-rijoma; kaju’uri-kahi-ma; mene’-kají-ma; kají-somoma’

(4) “that which causes purging”

(5) said to mean “vine of the river of celestial youth”

(6) varieties include: tsipu-tsueni, tsipu-wetseni, tsipu-makuni

(7) varieties include shuri-fisopa, shuri-oshinipa, shuri-oshpa, shuri awu oshi, shuri awu fiso

(8) literally means change or transformation; refers to the cooked brew, to the visions, or to the songs that accompany the ceremony

(9) note 8 may apply here, but not known for certain

(10) no general name has been uncovered, but varieties include: kuma-basere; wai-bu-ku-kihoa-ma; wenan-duri-guda-hubea-ma; yaiya-suava-kahi-ma; wai-buhua-guda-hebea-ma; myoki-buku-guda-hubea-ma

(11) “sun vine”

(12) varieties include punga waska, nuknu waska, shimbaya waska, among others