Working with the Root: The Facilitation of Healing and Activism In the Peruvian Amazon

Abstract

Over the last decades, there has been a surge of interest in Amerindian plant medicines, , administered by indigenous healers in sporadic groups across the world - especially ayahuasca. Parallel to this interest, energy and agricultural industries operating in Peru are expanding and challenging the self-determination of indigenous societies that still reside in the Amazonian rainforest. These two phenomena exist alongside each other, classifying indigenous societies within contrasting terms - as healers or obstacles to development. Facing foreign interest in either their knowledge systems or ancestral lands, these indigenous societies are operating in a situation where parts of the globalized world have recognized their medicines, knowledge and/or homelands as a resource for their own ends. Under the topic of environmental preservation and indigenous rights, this thesis discusses the founding of two organisations as a response to the increasing engagement between the Shipibo and the effects of the global trends introduced above. The Shipibo are an indigenous society from the Loreto and Ucayali region of the Peruvian Amazon who have received attention for their use of ayahuasca while facing challenges related to the deforestation of their homelands in Pucallpa. The two organisations consist of both Shipibo and international workers or volunteers who work in different ways towards the same goal: to maintain the Shipibos' self-determination and right to recreate their culture as they face a growing world. A central topic in this thesis concerns how these two organisations facilitate the motivations and experiences of foreigners interested in consuming and learning about ayahuasca or in supporting the Shipibo in their fight for self-determination. A discussion on the foreigners' motivation to travel to Peru will be brought into relation to how the two organisations are able to facilitate them. Through this facilitation, a communitas is produced as the foreigners' journeys to Peru reflects the ritual stages of rites of passage and liminality. Why are there so many westerners/northerners travelling to Peru and other Latin American countries with a desire to engage with plant medicines or environmental and social activism?