South America
Amazonian Traditions
vegetalista · curandero · onanya (Shipibo) · payé
Shipibo-Konibo, Shuar, Yanomami, Tukanoan, Ashaninka and many others
EthnographyModern
Amazonian ritual practice centres on song, plant relationships, dietary restriction and the management of predation between beings. Ayahuasca is one element within some of these traditions — not their definition, and not present everywhere.
Ritual specialists
- Long apprenticeships built on dieta: seclusion, restriction and plant tutelage
- Song (ikaro, ícaro) as the primary technology of healing
Cosmology
- Perspectivism: many beings see themselves as persons and others as prey
- Plants and animals as teachers, kin, adversaries and owners
Ritual practice
- Nocturnal song ceremony
- Sucking, blowing and smoke work
- Sorcery accusation and defence
History and pressure
- Rubber-boom violence and missionisation
- Late 20th-century emergence of an international ceremony economy
- Indigenous federations asserting control over knowledge and territory
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