The Amazon rain forest, also known as the “Amazon Jungle,” is a tropical forest that covers most of South America. More than half of the entire region is covered by a moist rainforest. It has territories with nine nations (Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela) and over three thousand(3000) indigenous communities. The indigenous communities inhabit about nine percent (9%) of the forest, but sixty (60) of the groups are isolated from the others and the modern society. The numbers have dwindled for many reasons, but some of their cultural activities have remained. Their tradition was built around ceremonies around a “plant of power.” The Ayahuasca ceremony is the most popular known ceremony in the Amazon forests, which is still practiced today.
With the Amazon rainforest holding more than 120 indigenous nationalities living there for thousands of years, like the Shuar and Maijuna, accumulating knowledge over the years and how to benefit from it, cultural ceremonies held in the Amazon forest were believed to allow them to examine and treat ailments that were mental and physical in the community. During the ceremonies, they were said to invite their ancestors, different animals, fish, and spirits from other worlds to consult them and give them wisdom.
Despite the Amazon forests being inhabited by many tribes with different geographical distances and cultural differences, the indigenous people recognized the cultural ceremonies performed with a vine called Ayahuasca, considered sacred and spiritual. This ritual or ceremony was called the Ayahuasca Ritual.
Identity
The Ayahuasca rituals and ceremonies were an identity to the Amazonian communities and an essential foundation of their ancestral medicine. The tribes, while preserving the rituals, were able to maintain their genetic principles and link their history. The ceremonies were practiced as a community to give them an identity. The Ayahuasca collective rituals and ceremonies survived attacks from people who considered them to be witchcraft and blasphemy. The ceremonies went beyond the native territories, spread in the Amazon, and ended up in the modern world.
Healing
The foundation of the Ayahuasca ritual was mostly for healing purposes, and healing in the Amazon forest, besides being traditional, was mostly executed by men who took responsibility for protecting the native groups through their strength. The communities often had wars with other tribes and also among the healers. Women were also allowed to use the Ayahuasca for healing, but it made it hard for them to conduct the ceremonies if they were menstruating. It was also difficult for them to even learn the rules of the activity because of being secluded for long periods while the men were perfecting the craft.
However, older women could take up the craft later in life because menstruation did not affect them. Women could learn faster than men, were good at identifying illnesses that were reproductive or family-related, and managed to treat them at home. Still, there were risks of women being vulnerable and getting trapped by sorcerers because of their fragile emotions. Though it was said that the Ayahuasca energy was feminine, it was important to balance the energy by using a man to conduct the traditional ceremonies. Because of their good memories, women were used as safe keepers of the traditional recipes, the rites, all ancient knowledge to do with the ceremonies and rituals, and the songs that came with the Ayahuasca ceremonies.
The preparation of Ayahuasca differed for each tribal group. The recipe depended on the healers’ knowledge of the different plants involved and the territory the plants were picked from. The preparation of the concoction and the way the ceremonies were conducted varied, too, depending on the ceremony’s purpose, i.e., healing, protection, etc.
Unifying Communities
This Ayahuasca ritual, also popularly known as “shamanic ceremonies, “consisted of concoctions made with Ayahuasca or yage’s, which is a blend prepared with baisteriopsis caapi, a vine with hallucinogenic effects which was an essential part of the Amazonian Society. The Amazon people believe that when they perform the shamanic ceremonies, the bond that holds the families, villages, and distant clans together in the Amazon community and the universe is positioned and tuned to echo their well-being in health, knowledge, abundance, and power.
The traditional Ceremonies in some villages like siona and suya have brought elders, youths, men, and women together. As a result, the communities can examine their political and jurisdiction rights to reclaim their ancestral land across the Ecuador –Columbia border. Organizations assisting them in recovering their cultural roots have built their structures. Inside these structures, they hold meetings to discuss reconnecting and defending their cultural survival and indigenous rights. Many studies in anthropology have revealed that many other indigenous communities and mestizo groups in Peru still consume the ayahuasca brew to date.
Spirituality
The preparation of Ayahuasca for the ceremony is considered very spiritual. Hence, it is ritualized from when the plants are picked from the forest to when the brew is made and consumed. The healers also prepare themselves for each stage of the process by following strict rules, which include what they eat and sexual and other restrictions because the plant is very powerful and can affect emotions and physical and spiritual well-being. The ceremonies take place at night and in groups. When consumed, the Ayahuasca was said to have an out-of-body experience and gave the person spirituality to access another world where they were able to contact other realms and prevent spiritual aggression and shamanic attacks sent by other tribes or sorcerers. All their senses are altered, and they experience a sense of well-being and peace. However, when the effects are over, they still have the memory of the visions and the entire experience, which draws them to the community to try and get the meaning of their experience.
Rite of passage
The rituals and ceremonies were also used as a rite of passage for the young in some cultures of the Amazonian forest. The young men are taken through their cultural foundation and source of life while confronting their deepest fears in terms of spiritual battles in some communities like the Shuar. It’s a real-life experience.
Cultura y Droga, 27, (33), ener
Nature Conservation
Culturally, some of the indigenous communities of the Amazon forest are considered guardians of the forest and protectors of natural resources in the rainforest. Communities in the southeastern region of the Amazon rainforest have managed to preserve a large stretch of the forest for over 1000 years based on cultural and ancient beliefs of their responsibility to protect nature.
The women in this community are responsible for ensuring plenty of food for everyone and enough food for the traditional ceremonies and meetings that include dancing by taking care of the seeds. Using recommended techniques to farm the land, the women cultivate for five to seven years and then control the plot by burning the clearing to allow the land to regenerate and trees to regrow, thus conserving nature by restoring soil health. While the soil is resting, the communities live off the forest products to avoid destroying the forest.
Protection
The Puerto Guaynabo Community living downstream along the Miriti –Parana River also has a cultural meeting place that is traditionally thatched, where a shaman performs rituals to protect the farmers from snake bites before permitting them to burn small patches of land divided and allocated for growing crops. The shaman believes that water and the forest, which are part of nature, have spirits, and as owners of the forests, the farmers have to be permitted to farm the land like any other owner of anything has to give permission.
Guardians
Consequently, before trees are cut and fallen, the shamans also perform healing rites to request permission to connect with the spirits. Certain species of trees cannot be cut because of their sacred nature.
The Amazon community cares for nature and defends it by emphasizing that trees, like humans, are considered a source of life, a product of nature because humans come from the earth and live and depend on nature. As the spiritual leaders of the communities, the shamans have the responsibility to ensure that ancestral cultural practices like the traditional ceremonies that include rites are performed for their beliefs to be preserved. The same practices are passed on in theory orally and practice, including differentiating what they consider sacred and what is not. The shamans are the memories of their people, but the methods and resources vary according to the knowledge and intuition of each shaman passing on the information. Even when the knowledge of the mixtures of brew of Ayahuasca concocted, and its possible benefits differ from spiritual leader to spiritual leader
There are also cultural rules governing fishing and owning cattle. There are ways of fishing that are allowed and banned. Some rules include banning fishing using dynamites and keeping cattle, which are considered to destroy everything, including nature and the earth.
National Cultural Heritage
The highest significance of the traditional ceremonies performed by the Amazonian communities came when the Peruvian government declared the use of the Ayahuasca plant to perform the popularly known Ayahuasca ceremonies led by the spiritual leaders called shamans in the Amazon communities as a national cultural heritage.
This inspiring achievement protected the ceremonies use of the Ayahuasca concoctions as a tradition practiced for decades by the Amazon indigenous communities, including its spiritual ritual components, the vast knowledge of the shamans and the shamans themselves while also benefiting nature and the environment, and the same time protecting the plants involved.
The therapeutic properties and potential of Ayahuasca, including firsthand experience with its use, have been investigated in depth for over a decade, but 13 years from the date of the declarations, there are no regulations published for enacting its use despite commercial pressure due to the risks involved in its use. The concept is still open and unfinished (Giove,2022).
Recovery
Over the years, the spiritual connectivity of the ceremonies has faded or broken due to different violent eventualities and calamities destroying the ceremonial spaces. Currently, the areas previously inhabited by the indigenous communities are deforested by pre-colonial settlements and modern infrastructure of roads and pipelines dividing and confusing the natives.
However, it is remarkable that as a way of healing from previous atrocities meted on them over the years, some of the communities have started rekindling the fires of the ceremonies to preserve their history and to re-strategize on how to recover some of the communities’ territories. Organizations like Amazon Frontline have assisted in promoting the recovery of ceremonies by constructing spacious places for large gatherings in Kofan and Sona village.
References
Giove Nakazawa, R.A. (2022). The Ayahuascaritual: Peruvian national cultural
heritage and its possible integration into the primary health
System. Revista Cultura y Droga, 27(33), 17- 41.
Gilmore, Michael P., Brian M. Griffiths, and Mark Bowler. “The socio-cultural significance of mineral licks to the Maijuna of the Peruvian Amazon: implications for the sustainable management of hunting.” Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine 16.1 (2020): 1-10.
Reyes-García, Victoria, and Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares. “Sing to learn: The role of songs in the transmission of indigenous knowledge among the Tsimane’of Bolivian Amazonia.” Journal of Ethnobiology 39.3 (2019): 460-477.
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