Pre-occupied that the knowledge of plants and practices of the Onanyabo – Ancestral Healers are being lost and not being transmitted to future generations;

Recognizing the repercussions of colonialism, state-based and Western education, and the invasion of industrialization, which has threatened the ancestral practices and knowledge of Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo Peoples;

Recognizing the great expansion of spiritual tourism in Amazonian territories, and that the international interest comes with opportunities as much as dangers for the on-going development of ancestral knowledge;

Recognizing the importance of coordination and agreements between Onanyabo for confronting the opportunities and for discussing strategies to address the problems of our communities, which have been dramatically highlighted by the assassination of Maestra Olivia Arévalo Lomas;

We declare that:

1. Given their history, practice, and methodology, Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo healing and expertise in medicinal plants are anti-colonialist forms of practice and knowledge, able to resist, transform and reconfigure with every difficulty and threat. Thus healers, teachers, practitioners must remain aware and proud to cultivate the anti-colonialist nature of their practices.

2. The work of healing and the struggle towards self-determination are not separable. They must move forward on the same path.

Consequently, we

1. Adopt the term Onanya - Ancestral Healer to replace the common ‘shaman’ and ‘shamanism’, imported terminologies that do not apply historically to the particularities of our culture.

2. Suggest that Onanyabo can focus on the training and education of Shipibos youth, especially in the communities, so as to counteract cultural appropriation by foreign apprentices who numerically overshadow local ones since our young populations do not have comparable economic resources to engage in long periods of training.

3. Invite Onanyabo, practitioners, workers and students (indigenous as well as foreign) to be conscious of the politics of Shipibo sovereignty, and to contribute to the struggle for cultural, economic and social self-determination.

4. Propose the establishment of a school, ‘Escuela Meraya’ (in accordance with values of this declaration) that would include education in plant medicine, politics, and art as well as in digital, vegetal and spiritual technologies.

5. Will investigate the development of a mechanism by which foreigners taking advantage of indigenous medicine, healing and spiritual labour might be able to contribute to the cultural and political empowerment of Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo Peoples and their path towards self-determination; such a mechanism could include, for example, a tax or contribution for each ‘pasajero’ (foreign patient) to be donated to an organization such as the ‘Escuela Meraya’.

6. Invite Onanyabo, to join the Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo Association of Onanyabo/ Ancestral Healers so that they might coordinate in unity and demand their rights and fair and just remuneration.

Source...

In light of yet another assault on one of our healers, Maestra Lucinda Mahua Campos, who was shot on May 6, 2019 in the community of Paoyhan in the district of Padre Márquez (in the Loreto region of Ucayali Province);

And noting that the attack coincided with the anniversary of the assassination of another of our master healers, Olivia Arévalo Lomas, at the hands of a Canadian tourist;

And given the upcoming World Ayahuasca Conference to be held on May 31 in Girona, Catalunya, Spain;

We, the Union of Onanyabos and Traditional Medical Practitioners of the Shipibo Konibo (ASOMASHK) along with the autonomous governing council of the Shipibo (COSHIKOX), issue the following declaration with utmost urgency on behalf of the Shipibo nation, with a population of 45,000 spread across several provinces in Peru and residing in other countries of the world.

Apprehensive by the rampant abuse by a outsiders of our sacred plants and of the ancestral knowledge of Amazonian Peoples,

Recognizing the rapid growth of spiritual tourism in the Amazon;

Acknowledging, at the same time, that global interest comes with dangers as well as opportunities for the evolution of indigenous knowledge;

And further considering that:

Ayahuasca (banisteriopsis caapi) is a sacred plant traditionally used by many Amazonian Peoples and as such was declared the cultural heritage of the Shipibo Konibo nation by the National Institute of Culture (INC) under the National Executive Resolution # 836 of the Legal Code of the State of Peru (published on July 12, 2008 ); and that our therapeutic and healing chant, the Icaro, is also cultural heritage as declared by the Peruvian state;

The Declaration of Yarinacocha, was issued on August 19, 2018 during the first Convention of Traditional Shipibo Medical Practitioners, convened by COSHIKOX as part of the initiative for autonomous governance and self determination, and resulting in the founding of the Union of Onanyabos and Traditional Medical Practitioners of the Shipibo Konibo (ASOMASHK); and this declaration denounced the abuses and enumerated the needs and concerns regarding spiritual wisdom and ancestral knowledge;

The World Ayahuasca Conference, which will be held this year in Spain, is of great notoriety and international interest. However, we were not invited to this conference; not as indigenous people nor as an association of Onanyabo- keepers of the ancestral knowledge of sacred Amazonian plants. Nevertheless, on this occasion the global press and scientists from other nations will be speaking about the worldwide use of Ayahuasca.

We would like to state that:

Given our history, practice, and methodology, our work as Onanyabo and the indigenous knowledge of sacred medicinal plants are anti-colonialist practices and thus deserving of proper use and social, economic and political respect. We are tired of seeing our knowledge and ancestral practices appropriated by a cannibalistic Western system.

There is a great risk that regulation, mainstreaming and medicalization will lead to the concentration of legitimacy in the world of Western medicine and to the exclusion of indigenous practices and communities. What is the point of these global conferences when our own communities are being destroyed and our knowledge and plant technologies are not being transmitted inter-generationally amongst our own people?

Our organization supports medical pluralism and we believe that our Shipibo medical practitioners - unified as Onanyabo – can work alongside experts and doctors of the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) to find solutions for illnesses that are afflicting our native communities and more generally in other parts of the world.

We request that organizers of all of the national and international activities and events related to the use of ancestral medicine who are not connected with our Association, and in particular those planned by foreign organizers, should ask for consent from ASOMASHK in order to counteract the illicit appropriation and piracy of our ancestral knowledge and traditional practices.


BOARD OF DIRECTORS COSHIKOX & BOARD OF DIRECTORS ASOMASHK


Being conscious of the importance of coordinating and achieving accord amongst maestras and maestros to accept circumstances as well as discuss strategies to solve the problems that impact our communities- with this goal, ASOMASHK was born. ASOMASHK was created in order to coordinate and mark the importance of the work of maestras and maestros, and to provide a mechanism to discuss and strategize towards solutions for problems that affect our communities. ASOMASHK is an organization representative of Onanyabo, the ancestral medical practitioners, formed in defense of our traditional medicine knowledge and wisdom. It entered into validity with Title # 2019-00192700 of the National Superintendent of Public Records in the State of Peru; established and carrying out activities as of January 2019 as a Juridical Person legally constituted and protected by the laws of Peru, valid legal norms, and international treaties and agreements such as the ILO and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Source...

They want a piece of the big cake.
Shipibos are loosing their culture and traditions because wersterners have more money to pay for long term trainings ?!?!?! Is that a joke who is asking for hundreds of dollars for drinking one small cup of their so sacred medicine ?? I think that the few healers who are not interested in making money on people's health are not interested in making part of this association neither.
If they really wanted to preserve the ancestral knowledge they would go in the forest and take their plants - which are all growing for free, giving medicine for free and teaching everyone who want to learn for free and all of this without any distinction of race or culture - instead of taxing foreigners for their so called school. I mean nature is the school, spirits are the teachers.

Don't sell your culture and nobody will buy it.

They want a piece of the big cake.
Shipibos are loosing their culture and traditions because wersterners have more money to pay for long term trainings ?!?!?! Is that a joke who is asking for hundreds of dollars for drinking one small cup of their so sacred medicine ?? I think that the few healers who are not interested in making money on people's health are not interested in making part of this association neither.
If they really wanted to preserve the ancestral knowledge they would go in the forest and take their plants - which are all growing for free, giving medicine for free and teaching everyone who want to learn for free and all of this without any distinction of race or culture - instead of taxing foreigners for their so called school. I mean nature is the school, spirits are the teachers.

Don't sell your culture and nobody will buy it.

They want a piece of the big cake.
Shipibos are loosing their culture and traditions because wersterners have more money to pay for long term trainings ?!?!?! Is that a joke who is asking for hundreds of dollars for drinking one small cup of their so sacred medicine ?? I think that the few healers who are not interested in making money on people's health are not interested in making part of this association neither.
If they really wanted to preserve the ancestral knowledge they would go in the forest and take their plants - which are all growing for free, giving medicine for free and teaching everyone who want to learn for free and all of this without any distinction of race or culture - instead of taxing foreigners for their so called school. I mean nature is the school, spirits are the teachers.

Don't sell your culture and nobody will buy it.

They want a piece of the big cake.
Shipibos are loosing their culture and traditions because wersterners have more money to pay for long term trainings ?!?!?! Is that a joke who is asking for hundreds of dollars for drinking one small cup of their so sacred medicine ?? I think that the few healers who are not interested in making money on people's health are not interested in making part of this association neither.
If they really wanted to preserve the ancestral knowledge they would go in the forest and take their plants - which are all growing for free, giving medicine for free and teaching everyone who want to learn for free and all of this without any distinction of race or culture - instead of taxing foreigners for their so called school. I mean nature is the school, spirits are the teachers.

Don't sell your culture and nobody will buy it.

If you don't sell it they will steal it. Forrest's are getting smaller and smaller, so in my opinion you need another structure to protect your knowledge.

We could think that a culture belongs to the human race but even cultures are inspired by contacts with nature. Shipibo people want to patent their drawings and their songs which come from ... plant pririts !! I do not invent, that's their words. It is more honest to consider that all of this belongs to the plants...

From the moment they start to talk about making a school (which is totally out of their culture) they're not credible anymore. I cannot say that I gonna run an ashram for preserving western culture, its a nonsense.

teaching everyone who want to learn for free and all of this without any distinction of race or culture

I tend to agree with this analysis. If you want your languages, songs, stories, and ceremonies to last into the 21st century and beyond, you have to share them! With the rate that traditional languages are going extinct (far faster than plants, animals, and cultures themselves) there is no time to quibble with xenophobia and racism. If someone, anyone, doesn't learn and archive the language and traditions, they die off with the few remaining fluent speakers.

Inspired by nature doesn't mean there is no cultural or otherwise human element in it. Shipibo patterns are specific to the Shipibos, other Amazonian tribes don't traditionally produce them.


Using your logic, one could say the French shouldn't use computers to preserve their culture, language etc. because computers are not a traditional part of their culture; indeed, they were only introduced into France within the last 100 years and they were invented in America anyway; if the French do use computers, they lose credibility.

With no doubt France and the USA match perfectly with the characteristics of a western society and consequently we are from the same culture. Traditional shipibo culture doesn't match to any of those points so it is a different culture.

A random example of this is the fact that today, everybody, maybe even british people, seems to believe that computers are an american invention. I would say that is a loss for the UK.