Catching up with Glenn Shepard: Interview to launch benefit photography sale with Linda Matney Gallery

This interview launches a new partnership with Linda Matney Gallery. Proceeds from the sale of selected photographs will directly support vital health services including emergency Covid-19 prevention aid for the indigenous peoples of Manu National Park.

1. What is your connection with the Linda Matney Gallery and John Lee Matney?

I have known “Lee” since second grade and we have been friends ever since. Lee was always an avid photographer and had his own darkroom in the basement of his house. He taught me how to shoot, develop and print black and white film when I was about twelve years old. Lee’s first photos were artistic closeups of everyday objects, which his father referred to jokingly as “doorknobs.” His instinct of using the camera to look at the world in new ways was an influence on me since the very beginning.We both worked on the school newspaper and I remember he took dramatic photographs of the remarkably professional theater productions at our school’s drama department. Lee’s mother Linda was a kind and generous woman, she always had a smile on her face and a meal on her table. She had excellent taste in art and antiques, and she and my mother were dear friends. We both lost our mothers in their prime, and that has been another bond in our friendship over the years. I was happy when he opened his own gallery and named it after his mother. We went our separate ways after college, but always stayed in touch. And when Lee moved back to the Tidewater area after living many years in Athens, we renewed our friendship whenever I was home visiting my parents. We have collaborated on several creative projects over the years, including gallery exhibits of my photographs and collection of ethnographic objects from the Amazon, fund-raising events for indigenous causes and a prize-winning avant-garde film.

Taking aim. Manu National Park, 1992. 
Purchase the fine art print.

2. Give us some background about your use of photography in your work

I am an anthropologist and ethnobotanist, and I have traveled and carried out fieldwork with different indigenous peoples throughout the world, including Bedouin tribes in Jordan, hill tribes of northern Thailand, Mayan peoples of southern Mexico and numerous indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin. Though I have always used photography to document the scientific aspects of my work, from indigenous healing ceremonies to medicinal plants, I always saw photography as a way to express aspects of my experiences in different cultures that don’t come across in dry, scientific studies. I especially enjoy taking portraits of people that I know. A photographic subject whom you have known for years looks at the camera in a very different way than someone who is encountering a journalistic photographer for the first time. I appreciate it when this sense of trust and familiarity comes across in my photos, such that their subjects appear first and foremost as friends, companions, fellow humans who share their experiences with a knowing glance.

Elena. Manu National Park, 1992.

3. Comment on how art intersects with your work and your life in Brazil and Peru.

Before the days of digital photography, I would always travel to the field with equal numbers of rolls of color and black and white film. Of course, surrounded by the lush colors of the tropical rainforest I would usually shoot up all my color film first, and then be left with only black and white for the second half of my trip. As frustrating as it was to run out of color film hundreds of miles and months away from the nearest film store, I always appreciated this forcing of black and white film upon myself when returning to develop the photos. As beautiful as the colors of the tropical rainforest are, and as useful are the chrome slides I used to present my work in the days before PowerPoint, I always found the black and white photos to have a more abstract and timeless feel to them, pushing aside all the distractions of color to get at the true essence of form, composition and human connection.

Ayahuasca vine. Manu National Park, 1992. 
Purchase the fine art print.

4. Comment on your piece in the New York Review of Books about Martin Gusinde's photography in the book The Lost Tribes of Tierra del Fuego. What are your personal feelings about Gusinde's photographs? How does that work inspire you?

I was delighted when the New York Review approached me about reviewing a collection of Martin Gusinde’s ethnographic photographs published by Thames & Hudson. Many professional photographers don’t understand the first thing about anthropology, and most anthropologists are even worse at photography than photographers are at anthropology. Gusinde is that rare talent who was able to capture the surrealistic quality of the ritual life of native peoples of Tierra del Fuego in high-quality artistic images, while also conducting meticulous documentation of the last vestiges of their ceremonies before the people succumbed to disease and acculturation. His photographs speak to that unique dynamic of truly anthropological photography which is to capture our fundamental shared humanity while also respecting the deep and beautiful cultural differences that make human life so diverse and fascinating. 

Yanomami headman making an arrow point. Marari River, Brazil, 2004.

You also reviewed Davi Kopenawa's book The Falling Sky for the New York Review. Tell us about that book.

The autobiography of Yanomami shaman and philosopher Davi Kopenawa, The Falling Sky, is one of the great works of anthropology of the 21st century. Rather than using academic jargon, anthropologist/translator Bruce Albert takes advantage of his deep understanding of the Yanomami language and his long friendship with Davi to craft an elegant, direct, first-person narrative told in Davi’s own voice, as selected and edited from over 100 hours of audiotape that Albert had recorded over many years. The book provides a vivid account of Davi’s shamanic visions while also presenting his philosophical reflections on his own people’s world view. It also presents a passionate appeal for indigenous rights and a condemnation of the damage brought by missionaries and gold miners.


5. Comment on your own photography as art and the new works we are presenting

I was a slow convert to digital photography, precisely because I enjoyed the luminosity of color chromes as well as the abstract quality of black and white. I was always a big fan of the alchemical magic of darkroom work, and the ability to control every square inch of the print. I didn’t buy my first digital camera until 2007 when I got back from the field and literally spent three months tracking down a lab to develop my film. But once I began to get used to the new technology, I appreciated the way digital photography takes away so many constraints imposed by film photography, from rationing your film stock to missing photos in low light settings. So I am especially excited over this new collaboration with Linda Matney Gallery to go back to my old black and white negatives while also reworking some of my more recent digital images in monochrome.

Baby doll. Manu National Park, 2007.

6. Comment on your poetry and other fiction

From a young age I always wanted to be a writer. I saw a career in anthropology as a way of gathering tales and adventures to write about when I get too old to travel. But even in my academic writing I try to make use of my story-telling skills to share the experience of cultural difference in a direct way that hopefully anyone could read and appreciate. I have always tried to avoid using theoretical jargon in my writing, and won a number of anthropology writing awards for this more accessible and evocative style of writing. In 2011, I became so frustrated with the straight jacket of academic jargon that I created my blog, Notes from the Ethnoground. I had submitted an article to an anthropological journal, with the explicit intention of relating indigenous concepts through stories without using abstract jargon. The article was sent back requesting precisely the kind of theoretical discussion I was hoping to avoid, so I gave up on trying to rework the text and began writing short posts about my experiences in the field using accessible language and plenty of photos as well. In 2014, my first “ethno-fictional” short story, about a villager who turned into a jaguar, won a prize from the Society for Anthropology and Humanism. I hope to continue writing fiction that is firmly grounded in actual cultural experiences. I also wrote lots of poetry when I was younger, and occasionally produce new poems usually based on my experiences in indigenous cultures. Recently, my poem The Fish Trap was recognized by Sapiens.org to honor World Poetry Day.

Forest overlook. Manu National Park, Peru, 1995.

7. Tell me about how you have used your anthropological knowledge and photographic skills to help the indigenous communities where you have worked.

I have always felt a deep responsibility to provide practical assistance to the indigenous communities that have been so generous and patient with me through the years. When the Discovery Channel film that I worked on, Spirits of the Rainforest, won two Emmys in 1993, I worked through Peruvian and New York based NGOs to hold a fund raising event that benefited the community political organizations and health post. More recently I have worked with the non-profit organization Rainforest Flow to bring sustainable clean water, sanitation and hygiene projects to these remote communities, transforming their health status. Curiously, Nancy Santullo, director and founder of Rainforest Flow, was formerly a successful commercial photographer. For the past fifteen years, we have used our photography to document and spread the word about the project and draw attention to the health needs in these communities. We appreciate the support of Linda Matney Gallery over the years in hosting various fund-raising initiatives for this project. 

Because of this long term work in these communities, and the established relationship of trust and collaboration, Rainforest Flow is in a unique position to help prevent the deadly Covid-19 virus from entering Manu Park. I helped Rainforest Flow mobilize early communications between communities and park authorities to institute an immediate lockdown even before the Peruvian government took preventative action. There are currently no Covid-19 infections in any of the native communities where we work. However indigenous high school students studying outside the reserve have been stranded far from their home villages and need food, protective equipment, medicine, information, support and transportation to a safe place to carry out their quarantine. Rainforest Flow is creating an emergency Covid-19 relief fund to continue this vital work with native communities and Manu Park authorities to maintain the quarantine and develop safe protocols for the delivery of badly needed equipment and assistance. 

Safe water. Manu National Park, 2015.

Proceeds from selected photographs sold will benefit a community health and hygiene project, including vital Covid-19 prevention, in the same native communities where these photos were taken.  

---Visit the benefit photography sale on Artsy---

Toé (Brugmansia suaveolens): The Path of Day and Night [excerpt]

The Path of Day

Henchi, a young man from a remote Matsigenka native community in Peru's Manu National Park, left home one morning to go hunting in the vast and preserved Amazon rainforest around his village. It rained, and towards the end of the day when he had not returned, his relatives got worried and went out to look for him. They found Henchi, half-conscious, bruised and cut by palm thorns, sprawled at the base of a large Pouteria tree, a favorite fruit of monkeys. He had climbed into the treetops to recover a monkey, fatally shot with an arrow, that had gotten stuck in the branches. But he slipped on the wet bark and fell more than fifty feet to the ground. Henchi's spine was broken in several places, he couldn’t move and was in great pain, oscillating between consciousness and unconsciousness, between life and death. Everyone, including Henchi himself, thought he wasn't going to survive.

His relatives carried him back to the village, rolled up in a mat. The village's most respected shaman prepared a potent infusion made by boiling the stem-pith of a specimen of Brugmansia suaveolens from his garden. A Datura relative known in English as white angel’s trumpet, the plant is called toé or floripondio in the Peruvian Amazon. In the Matsigenka dialect of the Urubamba river it is known as saaro, while in the dialect spoken in Manu and Alto Madre de Dios the name is hayapa or jayapa, a word that seems to be a loan from the unrelated Huachipaeri language. On many occasions, especially when they are near an actual toé plant in their house patio, the Matsigekna may call it merely kepigari, which means “poison, intoxicating.” As is the case for other shamanic plants like ayahuasca, the Matsigenka refrain from using the plant's proper name when in close proximity to it as a way of showing respect for its spirit owner. The shaman offered Henchi a small gourd with a few ounces of  the toé decoction, and he entered a week-long trance of induced coma. Henchi remembers almost nothing that happened during that first dose of toé: he was “dead” (in the Matsigenka language, death and loss of consciousness are synonymous) for a week. 

"The 'mother' of the plant appeared..."
La India de los Floripondios: Alfredo Ramos Martinez, 1932.

When he woke up, the shaman asked if he was still in pain. Henchi said yes, and so the shaman made another dose of about the same size, and he spent another week in trance. This time, Henchi said that a group of small, happy people appeared, the invisible forest spirits that the Matsigenka call Saankariite, the “Invisible” or “Pure Ones.” They approached him singing and playing musical instruments. The "mother" of the plant appeared, a smiling woman dressed in a cushma, a native cotton tunic with geometric paintings. She blew tobacco smoke onto his body, sucked on his body in several places to extract palm thorns that were still inside, causing pain, and then flew with him to a distant city. There, doctors, nurses and mechanics in white uniforms took care of him, giving him medicines, healing his injuries and "welding" his spine with metalworking tools. 

When he awoke again a week later, the shaman asked if he was still in pain. Henchi said he was better, but still felt pain. The shaman made another bowl of toé tea for him, and Henchi went into a trance again and spent another week unconscious, visiting the fantastic world of the spirits and receiving their miraculous healing powers. After three doses of toé, and three weeks of psychedelic coma, Henchi was no longer in much pain, and could move a little. Over the months, he gradually regained her strength, and in less than a year had returned to his normal activities. With his spine broken and "soldered" in several places, he remains hunchbacked, but he lives a mostly normal life, taking care of his garden, hunting and fishing, raising his children and drinking his masato (manioc beer). He acknowledges that toé, with its powerful "mother" spirit, saved his life. Considering the great distance of this remote village to the nearest hospital, and the limited medical resources at the local health post, Henchi's story is truly a miracle of traditional medicine.

“With his spine broken and ‘soldered’ in several places, he remains hunchbacked, but he lives a mostly normal life… Henchi's story is truly a miracle of traditional medicine.” 

The Path of Night

Simón was one of the most talented students in his village. He had big plans to study nursing in the regional capital, Puerto Maldonado, and then return home to work in the local health post in his own community. But the course of study was difficult and highly competitive, and his family couldn’t afford to maintain him in the city, where everything has a price. He eventually returned to his community, disappointed and frustrated. Like many indigenous youth people who leave their villages during their formative years to study or work in urban centers, Simón found himself in a cultural Catch-22: lacking the appropriate academic and professional background to compete in the university setting or the urban labor market, but also no longer accustomed to the pace of village life. Simón, who was not only intelligent but also handsome and charming, married and separated several times, and had affairs and children with several women.

Feeling confused, Simón decided to prepare toé for himself. The Matsigenka use toé to resolve multiple kinds of problems in their lives, whether health disorders, social or spiritual maladjustments, or even, in some cases, to locate lost or stolen belongings. Simón's grandfather was the same shaman who cured Henchi with toé, so Simon knew how to prepare the plant. He took the medicine and spent a few days walking in trance through the forest. But instead of absorbing the plant’s lessons and solving the problems in his life, Simón became "addicted" to toé, according to family members. While Matsigenka value toé as a powerful medicine for resolving various types of health and personal problems, they show great respect for the plant and are careful to avoid overindulgence. The Matsigenka say that toé has a treacherous side, that the plant’s mother is seductive, and may take a frequent user down the dark path, tempting them with the forbidden teachings of witchcraft.

And so it was with Simón. He began taking toé frequently, alone or in combination with ayahuasca. During manioc beer drinking parties, he would rip off a toé stalk (almost every Matsigenka house has a toé plant in the backyard in case of emergencies) and chew on it until he got “crazy.” One day, his newest wife had a fit of jealousy when she heard rumors that he was seeing one of his ex-wives. They argued, and Simón fled the house saying, "I'll take ‘the poison’ [i.e., toé] until I can't see anymore." He made a strong dose of toe and disappeared into the woods. Three days passed, and his body was found in an abandoned field a few miles downstream. Witnesses say the body had a strange green color, which they attribute to his toé intoxication. Some say it was suicide, others say the toé tricked him in a dangerous game of seduction…

...A painted textile of the Shipibo people of the Ucayali basin in Peru shows the toé plant growing along the bodies of two snakes, one red and one black, connected by a rainbow. The title of the painting is “The Path of Day and Night,” highlighting the widespread perception of toé in indigenous Amazonia as a plant with astonishing but ambiguous powers, often associated with witchcraft and sorcery.... 

“A painted textile of the Shipibo people of the Ucayali basin in Peru shows the toé plant growing along the bodies of two snakes, one red and one black, connected by a rainbow.”

Hayapa: The Highest Authority

...Brugmansia is considered the strongest and most toxic (kepigari) of all the plants in the Matsigenka pharmacopoeia (Shepard, 1998, 2005a). Unlike ayahuasca, which is taken frequently, usually in groups including the healer and / or patient, Brugmansia is taken rarely, usually alone and only by the patient. Frequent use of Brugmansia is considered very dangerous, leading to death or madness. Brugmansia is the last resort, the highest medical authority reserved for the most drastic cases. The shaman, healer or a respected family member prepares the potion and is responsible for watching over the person during the course of intoxication. The potion is prepared with great care, attention and respect. A branch of the plant is broken by hand (it should not be cut with a metal tool, which would offend the spirit of the plant) and a few inches of the pith is scraped out. The scraped material is boiled in water for fifteen minutes or more, or steamed at high temperatures in a banana or other plant leaf. The potion is brewed away from the household to avoid contamination or impurities that could kill the patient. Doses are measured very carefully in drops or small gourds, as even a small dose can last from one night to three days. An overdose can make you hallucinate for weeks or months, go crazy for the rest of your life, or die.
The effects of Brugmansia and other psychoactive Solanaceae are very different from those of other shamanic preparations like ayahuasca, Psilocybe mushrooms, or peyote. The different tropane alkaloids present, which vary in their relative concentrations depending on the species or variety, plant part, and form of preparation, combine to create a unique visionary state…

“Doses are measured very carefully in drops or small gourds, as even a small dose can last from one night to three days. An overdose can make you hallucinate for weeks or months, go crazy for the rest of your life, or die.”

The person under the influence of Brugmansia looks like a somnambulist, walking and dreaming with their eyes open, unable to distinguish between the material world around them and the juxtaposed visions of the spirit world. They wander through the dark forest at night with ease, their vision illuminated by the eternal sun in the realm of spirits. The person often feels thirsty and hot, removing their clothes and leaving them strewn in the bush. A patient with a chronic or apparently incurable disease may disappear for several days, walking away to the realm of the invisible Saankariite villages. There, shamans, healers, or “Madre Toé” herself, treat the patient by massaging and sucking the body to remove intrusive objects or revealing the sorcerer or evil spirits responsible for the illness. Sometimes the patient reports being taken by car or plane to distant cities where they treated by “white” doctors and nurses who use modern tools and machinery.

The Saankariite and especially the Mother of Toé are powerful, but they are also mischievous, and sometimes treacherous. Small, “child-sized,” these beings may reveal profound knowledge, but they can also play games with the patient, tricking the person into drinking sand like water, or eating leaves like food. Wide paths through the forest open and then close in a tangle of vegetation. Great vistas illuminate and vanish. Wise, other-worldly characters appear, speak profound and mysterious words, then suddenly disappear with a sad gaze into a handful of bones, dry branches and leaves, taking the cosmic revelations back to oblivion. Jaguars, monsters, evil giants and witches block the way, threaten, chase. The Saankariite have a lot to offer, but may also ask for concessions in return. With overuse, the toé plant’s spirit “owner” may tempt the person with dangerous sorcery teachings, or deceive them with false promises or deadly challenges.

When the effect passes and one returns to the material world, very little is remembered of the fantastical experiences of the spirit world: it all seems like a vague dream…

“The title of the painting is ‘The Path of Day and Night,’ highlighting the widespread perception of toé in indigenous Amazonia as a plant with astonishing but ambiguous powers, often associated with witchcraft and sorcery”

-----

Excerpted and translated from chapter 6 in: 

B. Labate and S. Goulart (Eds.) O uso de plantas psicoativas nas Américas. 

Rio de Janeiro: Gramma/NEIP, 2019. 372 pgs.

This excerpt was first published by The Ethnobotanical Assembly, September 2019.

Download Portuguese and English excerpts at Academia.edu

See also the 2004 documentary film A Figueira do Inferno ("The Fig from Hell") about the use of this plant by indigenous and Afro-Brazilian healers in northeast Brazil

Cite as: Shepard, Glenn H. Jr. (2017) “Toé (Brugmansia suaveolens): o caminho do dia e o caminho da noite.” In: O Uso de Plantas Psicoativas Nas Américas, edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Sandra Lucia Goulart. São Paulo: Compania das Letras, 121–136.

Full Chapter Bibliography:

BAER, Gerhard (1984) Die Religion der Matsigenka, Ost Peru. Basel: Wepf & Co. AG Verlag.

_____ (1992) “The one intoxicated by tobacco: Matsigenka shamanism,” in: MATTESON-LANGDON, Jean & BAER, Gerhard (Eds.). Portals of Power: Shamanism in South America. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 79-100.

BENNETT, Beverly Y. (1991) “Illness and Order: Cultural Transformation among the Machiguenga and Huachipaeri.”  PhD Thesis. Ithaca, NY: Dept. Anthropology, Cornell University. 

BROWN, Michael F. (1978) “From Hero’s Bones: Three Aguaruna Hallucinogens and their Uses”, in: FORD, Richard I. (Ed.). The Nature and Status of Ethnobotany. Anthropological Papers, vol. 67. Ann Arbor: Anthropology Museum, University of Michigan, pp. 119-136.

CAMINO, Alejandro (1977). “Trueque, correrías e intercambio entre los Quechas Andinos y los Piros y Machiguenga de la montaña peruana”. Amazonia Peruana, 1(2), pp. 123-140. 

CASTRO DE LA MATA et al. (2012). “Independent Advisory Panel on Development Issues in South-Central Peru – 2011-2012 Report.” Lima: Centro de Sustentabilidade Ambiental, Universidad Peruano Cayetano Heredia (relatório, 53 páginas). http://www.southperupanel.org/front/report

EDWARDS, David P. et al. (2009). “A plant needs its ants like a dog needs its fleas’: Myrmelachista schumanni ants gall many tree species to create housing.” The American Naturalist, 174(5), pp. 734-740.

FURST, Peter (Ed.) (1972). Hallucinogens and culture: the ritual use of hallucinogens. New York: Praeger Publishers.

HARNER, Michael (1972). “The role of hallucinogenic plants in European witchcraft”, in: HARNER, Michael (Ed.). Hallucinogens and shamanism. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 123-150.

JOHNSON, Allen W. (1983) “Machiguenga gardens,” in: HAMES, R. e VICKERS, W. (Eds.). Adaptive Responses of Native Amazonians. New York: Academic Press, pp. 29–63.

_____ (2003). Families of the Forest The Matsigenka Indians of the Peruvian Amazon. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. 

JOHNSON, Orna R. & Allen W. Johnson (1975) “Male-female relations and the organization of work in a Machiguenga community”. American Ethnologist, 2(4), pp. 634-638.

OPAS, Minna (2001) Time and kinship: representations of temporality among the Piro women of Eastern Peru. MA thesis. Finland: Department of Comparative Religion, University of Turku. 

RENARD-CASEVITZ, France-Marie; SAIGNES T.H. e TAYLOR, A.C. (1988). Al Este de los Andes: Relaciones entre las Sociedades Amazónicas y Andinas entre los Siglos XV y XVII. Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala/IFEA.

ROSENGREN, Dan (1987). In the Eyes of the Beholder: Leadership and the Social Construction of Power and Dominance among the Matsigenka of the Peruvian Amazon. Goteborg: Goteborgs etnografiska museum.

_____ (1998) “Matsigenka myth and morality: Notions of the social and the asocial”. Ethnos, 63(2), pp. 248-272.

RUDGELY, R. (2000). The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances. New York: St. Martin's Press. 

SCHULTES, Richard E. & HOFFMAN, Alfred (1972). The Botany and chemistry of hallucinogens. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

_____ (1992). Plants of the Gods: their sacred. Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers. Rochester, Vermont: Healing Arts Press. 

SHEPARD, Glenn H. Jr. (1987). “Ancient Visions of Healing, Hopes for Modern Health: A Medical Ethnography of Rival Peruvian Villages.” Senior Thesis. Princeton University. 

_____ (1998). “Psychoactive Plants and Ethnopsychiatric Medicines of the Matsigenka.” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 30(4), pp. 321-332.

_____ (1999). “Shamanism and diversity: A Matsigenka perspective”, in: POSEY, D.A. (Ed.). Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity. London: United Nations Environmental Programme and Intermediate Technology Publications (Supplement to the U.N.E.P. Global Biodiversity Assessment), pp. 93-95.

_____ (2002). “Primates in Matsigenka subsistence and worldview”, in: FUENTES, A. & L. Wolfe (Eds.). Primates Face to Face. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, pp. 101-136.

_____ (2004a). “A sensory ecology of illness and therapy in two Amazonian societies.” American Anthropologist, 106(2), pp. 252-266.

_____ (2004b). “Native Central and South American shamanism”, in: WALTER, M.N. & E.J.N. Fridman (Eds.). Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, vol. 1. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, pp. 365-370.

_____ (2005a). “Venenos divinos: plantas psicoativas dos  Machiguenga do Peru”, in: LABATE, Beatriz C. & GOULART, Sandra L. (Eds.). O Uso ritual das plantas de poder. Campinas: Editora Mercado de Letras, pp. 187-217.

_____ (2005b) “Psychoactive botanicals in ritual, religion and shamanism.” Chapter 18 in: ELISABETSKY, E & N. Etkin (Eds.), Ethnopharmacology. Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), Theme 6.79. Oxford, UK: UNESCO/Eolss Publishers (http://www.eolss.net).

_____ (2010). “The return of the secret shaman,” in: EEDE, J. (Ed.). We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples. London: Quadrille/Survival International, pp. 130-31. http://ethnoground.blogspot.com/2011/04/return-of-secret-shaman.html.

_____ (2015a). “Agony and Ecstasy in the Amazon: Tobacco, pain and the hummingbird shamans of Peru.” Broad Street, 2, pp. 5-20. Richmond, VA: Virginia Commonwealth University. 

_____ (2015b). “Will the real shaman please stand up?: The recent adoption of ayahuasca among indigenous groups of the Peruvian Amazon”, in: LABATE, Beatriz C. & CAVNAR, Clancy (Eds.).  Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 16-39.

_____ & CHICCHON, Avecita (2001). “Resource use and ecology of the Matsigenka of the eastern slopes of the Cordillera Vilcabamba,” in: ALONSO, L.E. et al. (Eds.). Biological and Social Assessments of the Cordillera de Vilcabamba, Peru. Washington, D.C: Conservation International, pp. 164-174.

VARGAS, Eduardo V. (2008). “Farmacos e outros objetos socio-técnicos: Notas para uma genealogia das drogas”, in: LABATE, Beatriz C. et al. (Eds.). Drogas e Cultura: novas perspectivas. Salvador: EDUFBA, pp. 41-64. 

VOEKS, Robert A. (1997). Sacred Leaves of Candomblé: African Magic, Medicine, and Religion in Brazil. Austin: University of Texas Press. 

WILBERT, Johannes (1987). Tobacco and shamanism in South America. New Haven: Yale University Press.

The Decade of Contact: Isolated indigneous people in the 21st century [excerpt]

José Carlos Meirelles, a retired field agent from Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, FUNAI, refers to the current moment for isolated indigenous people of the Amazon as “The Decade of Contact." After numerous tragic experiences in initiating contact with isolated indigenous peoples in the second half of the twentieth century, almost always resulting in their decimation, the official policy of FUNAI’s Department of Isolated Indians since 1989 has been to identify, protect and patrol the territories of isolated indigenous peoples without unnecessarily initiating the process of "contact." In extraordinary cases, as was the case of Korubo people on the Javari in 1996 and the Txapanawa of the Río Envira in 2014, FUNAI has initiated contact with isolated groups, taking special medical, logistical and cultural precautions in order to avoid imminent threats. Indigenous organizations and government agencies in neighboring countries have been inspired by FUNAI's example, incorporating the principle of "no-contact" into their policies for isolated peoples.

But the paving of the Inter-Oceanic Highway (formerly known as the ”Trans-Amazon Highway”) between Peru and Brazil, the continued expansion of the agricultural frontier, the growing demand for oil and gas exploration, and the activities of loggers, gold miners, drug traffickers and other outside agents are increasingly penetrating remote regions of the Amazon that once served as refuges for isolated peoples. Because of these external pressures, but perhaps also owing to their own internal dynamics, isolated indigenous peoples from the border region between Peru and Brazil — almost never seen in previous decades — have become increasingly visible and even aggressive in their interactions with neighboring populations.

One group of Mashco-Piro on the upper Madre de Dios maintains regular contact with a team from the Department of Isolated and Recently Contacted Peoples of Peru's Culture Ministry. In this photo, several Mashco-Piro have climbed aboard the Culture Ministry's boat (November, 2015).

In 2011, a Mashco-Piro archer in the Madre de Dios region of Peru killed Nicolas "Shaco" Flores, a Matsigenka indigenous man from a neighboring community who had engaged in tenuous exchanges and dialogue with the group for many years. In 2014, the isolated Txapanawa or “Xinane” people from the Envira river in Brazil took it upon themselves to approach FUNAI agents and neighboring indigenous communities and initiate contact, apparently out of desperation after being attacked by loggers and drug traffickers. In 2015, the settled Matis people of the Javari region in Brazil began a process of violent and uncontrolled contact with isolated Korubo people, leading to deaths on both sides, contagion of diseases to the Korubo, and a crisis in the Department of Isolated Indians in FUNAI. [More recently, another isolated people of the Javari was attacked by illegal gold miners].

And so began the Decade of Contact…

Roads, oil and gas concessions, logging and mining interests are edging in on the territory of isolated indigenous peoples (Image: Science Magazine).

… A growing wave of international media outlets have published sensational texts and photos about isolated indigenous peoples "emerging from the forest." In this context American anthropologists Robert Walker and Kim Hill suggested that contact was inevitable, and that the remaining isolated peoples should be subject to "controlled contact" for their own protection. The article generated tremendous controversy in the media and in academic circles, polarizing debates around policies for protecting isolated indigenous peoples and reducing the complexity of the subject to a false dichotomy between "forced contact" and the principle of no-contact: the so-called “Leave them alone" policy…

… National governments play a key role in guaranteeing the territories, rights, health and cultural integrity of isolated indigenous peoples. But the current scenario of road-building, major infrastructure projects and expansion of the agricultural, logging and mining frontier takes outside agents ever closer to isolated peoples while contributing to an increased curiosity among isolated peoples themselves. This situation demands new policies, concepts and protocols to deal with situations of imminent contact. The Decade of Contact has arrived. A naive "no contact" policy — "Leave them alone!" — has become not only a contradiction, but an act of neglect.

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 Excerpted and translated from “A década do contato," in: B. Ricardo & F. Ricardo (Eds.) Povos Indígenas no Brasil 2011/2016. São Paulo: Instituto Socioambiental, 556-559 (2017).

Read the full article (in Portuguese) at Academia.edu

A revised version of this work was presented at the seminar on "Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation: Anthropological perspectives" in Rio de Janeiro, Sept. 24-25, 2018

 

The hummingbird shamans of Peru: Excerpt from "Agony and Ecstasy in the Amazon"

Abanti blew the tobacco with fast furious puffs. The snuff entered my nostrils as a sequence of chartreuse explosions that expanded in chain reaction and spread backwards and upwards, illuminating my brain as if from the inside. I gasped at the roaring wildfire that penetrated my sinuses and seared the trigeminal nerves throughout my face. It was more than pain: it was suffering. He was punishing me, there was no doubt, but the pain he inflicted, though intentional, was not cruel or gratuitous. It was an initiation, a right of passage: he was teaching me a lesson.  

"It was more than pain. It was suffering."

The first dose was done and Abanti was already scraping up another. There was no question of refusal. As he rang the bone against the shell, it occurred to me that he was summoning someone, or something. The jets of powdery tobacco entered me once again.  A bright green cloud of excruciating vapor expanded inside my mind’s eye and then turned in on itself, swirling both outward and inward into iridescent fractals that filled me with their luminescence while folding both us within an evolving pattern. There was no way to look at it, since it was everywhere: a million unblinking eyes, a peacock’s fanning tail, a rainbow of undulating woven patterns, the shimmering plumage of a hummingbird. 

"As he rang the bone against the shell, it occurred to me that he was summoning someone, or something"

"A bright green cloud of excruciating vapor expanded inside my mind's eye and then turned in on itself, swirling both outward and inward into iridescent fractals" 
(art: Titia van Beugen)

The two of us were in some secret and enveloping holy place: a cave, a sacred grove. What he was transmitting to me through that bone tube was no longer a physical substance, it was knowledge, a living power: a sacrament. Some part of Abanti was entering me. Not Abanti exactly, but rather a silent twin, a shamanic dopplegänger that had been transmitted to him by some other master. It was both part of him and yet also more than him. It was ancient and eternal, but needed a human host. It could confer practical insights and mystical powers, but was also capricious and probably had its own agenda. This invasive alien force was melding with my spirit through a portal opened up by tobacco. The sensation was both euphoric and frightening.

"A capricious hummingbird seemed to be playing hide and seek with me"
(art: Clancy Cavnar)

I don’t know how many doses he gave me. At some point I whimpered, “Intaga,” and Abanti stopped. Tears streamed down my face. My breath came in sobs. My hands trembled, my face went slack and numb. Thick, dark mucus began to flow out of swollen sinuses onto my lips, neck and chest.  

An eerie buzzing sound surrounded me, sometimes near, sometimes far, sometimes in front or behind, on one side or the other. I could never locate it, much less identify its source. A capricious hummingbird seemed to be playing hide-and-seek with me. There was something unbearable about that sound, not so much menacing as utterly incomprehensible and disorienting. I was confused, with no sense of space or time, and the euphoria had drained out of me and in its place came the nausea, rising like a sickening tide that rolled and spun me to that dizzy, unsettling hum. There are times when one can hold firm and fight off ayahuasca nausea through force of will. This was not one of those times.

“Jiromanka,” I called out: ‘The pot.’

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Read the full article at Medium.

Excerpted from "Agony and Ecstasy in the Amazon: Tobacco, pain and the hummingbird shamans of Peru" Broad Street 2: 5-20 (2015).

Read another excerpt from "Agony and Ecstasy" on this blog.

This is your brain on Li-Lo: Ayahuasca in the Twenty-First Century

The genie is out of the bottle, tweeting about the next shamanic bodywork leadership seminar, and the bottle; well, check and see if it isn’t in the back of your fridge by the vegan TV dinner. 

"The genie is out of the bottle" [Photo: Pinterest]

Who would have ever imagined that ayahuasca, the enigmatic jungle potion William S. Burroughs once referred to as “the secret”[1] and whose very botanical identity was a matter of debate through the mid-twentieth century[2] would, within a matter decades, become a household (or at least, yoga-mat) word; the subject of hundreds of scientific, anthropological, and medical studies; a magnet for international tourism; the motor behind a global religious diaspora, and the victorious plaintiff in absentia of an historic Supreme Court case?

The rhyme “herbal brew”/“bamboo” in Paul Simon’s 1990 ayahuasca-inspired song “Spirit Voices” already rings of kitsch, but there is still something, if not fresh, then at least compelling about Sting in his biography Broken Music,[3] revealing that “ayahuasca has brought me close to something, something fearful and profound and deadly serious.” But by the time Lindsay Lohan confides to a reality TV host in April of 2015 that ayahuasca helped her “let go of past things… it was intense,”[4] Burroughs’s “final fix” has finally entered the realm of cliché.

How did this happen? What is the special appeal of this bitter Amazonian brew in the post-post-modern global village toolbox of self-realization? How has it fared in the bustling marketplace of New Age spiritual entrepreneurism and on the battleground of the War on Drugs? And what does it all mean for the multiple, religiously and socially diverse communities and individuals who consume ayahuasca, as well as various ayahuasca-like analogs, around the world?

We can think of the global ayahuasca expansion of the past two decades as a kind of second wave to the psychedelic revolution, following upon that other, “fantastic universal… inevitable… high and beautiful wave,” Hunter S. Thompson describes as cresting in the mid-1960s only to crash so quickly, and so disappointingly:

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back[5]…

"Wave of the Future"

… Will the “re-traditionalization” of global neo-ayahuasca ceremonies provide adequate social controls and ideological coherence to ensure that this “second wave” psychedelic revolution doesn’t crash and dissipate somewhere between the headwaters of the Amazon and the Great Barrier Reef? Will the contradictions of the modern self and the temptations of capitalism undercut the radical vision of individual and planetary healing that some neo-ayahuasca enthusiasts prophecy? Will ayahuasca become another battlefield casualty in the global War on Drugs, or will legislation evolve to protect ayahuasca as a religious sacrament, as a medicine, as a tool of experiential freedom? We don’t yet have all the answers to these questions, but the authors of this book are on the crest of the wave, and if anyone can see ahead to the far shore, it is they. 

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Excerpted from: "Ayahuasca in the Twenty-First Century: Having it Both Ways"[6], in:

The World Ayahuasca Diaspora: Reinventions and Controversies

edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Clancy Cavnar & Alex. K. Gearin

 Related links from this blog:
Agony and ecstasy in the Amazon
Return of the secret shaman
Dream tobacco
The cheerful pessimist
 Chronicle of a death foreclosed 
Between the cross and the Pleiades
  

References:
[1] Burroughs, W. S., & Ginsberg, A. (2006 [1963]). The yage letters: Redux. San Francisco: City Lights Books
[2] Schultes, R. E. (1957). The identity of the malphigaceous narcotics of South America. Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University, 18, 1–56.
[3] Sting. (2005). Broken Music: A Memoir. New York, NY: Dell, p. 18.
[4] Morris, B. (2014) Ayahuasca: A strong cup of tea. The New York Times, June 13, p.  ST1.
[5] Thompson, H. S. (1998 [1971]). Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. New York, NY: Random House/Vintage Books, p.  68.
[6] Shepard, G.H. Jr. (2017). Ayahuasca in the Twenty-First Century: Having it both ways. In: B.C. Labate, C. Cavnar & A.K. Gearin (eds.), The World Ayahuasca Diaspora: Reinventions and Controversies. New York: Routledge.