Yawanawa People

Since time immemorial Yawanawa people have lived in harmony with nature on the banks of the Gregorio river in the Amazonian region that concentrates the greatest biodiversity on the planet. In this rich habitat, their ancestors developed a vast knowledge of the healing plants of the forest and a worldview of great spiritual wisdom.
Their contact with western man happened a little more than a hundred years ago, very violently, initially with enslavement by the rubber barons and later by foreign protestant missionaries that forbid indigenous culture and spirituality. At the end of the last century, the Yawanawa regained the rights to their lands, drove away the missionaries and since then have been leading a process of cultural and spiritual revival that has crossed national boundaries and today fascinates the world.
The Yawa Festival is of major significance in this process, and has been held annually since 2001. Initially designed to restore and strengthen traditional culture among the natives, it quickly attracted international attention, and represents today an important milestone in the revival of the Amazonian ancestral cultures, serving as an example for several other tribes to follow the same path.

The traditional village where first contact was made is today a space dedicated exclusively to spirituality. Known as the Sacred Village, it is home to the burial grounds of their ancestors, a garden with more than 2,700 varieties of medicinal plants and is where the initiation of their spiritual leaders is carried out through isolation and plant diets.
Messengers of Yawanawa spirituality currently lead ceremonies in various capitals of Brazil and abroad, sharing the magic of this enchanted people through their ancestral medicines and exceptional musicality.

"I have been transformed"

PAJÉ AGOSTINO IKAMURU

Huni Kuin People

The Huni Kuin people, or “true people,” as they call themselves, inhabit mostly Brazilian lands in the tropical Amazon, but their lands extend to the foot of the Andes in eastern Peru. The Huni Kuin are the largest indigenous population in the Brazilian state of Acre, currently living in twelve indigenous lands along seven different rivers: Purus, Envira, Murú, Humaitá, Tarauacá, Breu and Jordão.

They had relatively late contact with the Western world, and even after decades of persecution, managed to keep their traditions alive. They speak hatxa kuin (“true language”) and live in a bilingual reality, where in most villages they can also communicate in Portuguese. They continue to practice sacred rituals with their traditional medicine, performing the traditional baptism of the children and celebrating the harvest and fertility festivals  known as “katxanawa”. The traditional medicines of the Huni Kui people are of immense importance to their worldview, and the collective use of ayahuasca (“Nixi Pae”) has a prominent place in their spiritual practice.

Today Huni Kuin spirituality echoes through the four corners of the world. A movement that began just over a decade ago with the arrival in Rio de Janeiro of young leaders to lead ceremonies outside of the villages, today sees several Huni Kuin spiritual leaders making yearly medicine trips to the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. There have been numerous exhibitions of this rich culture in some of the major museums in the world, as well as award-winning films and books. These messengers of the forest bring an important and positive message that points to a new time, a time of reconciliation between men and with Mother Nature.

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