Cute as Children, but Not Handsome as Adults: María Sabina,...
Gordon Wasson’s 1957 article in Life Magazine about his mushroom ceremony with the Mazatec curandera María Sabina arrived wrapped in several layers of familiar...
Toé (Brugmansia suaveolens): The Path of Day and Night
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...
Fifty Shades of Green
The tragic death from coronavirus of indigenous actor Antonio Bolivar, star of the Oscar-nominated film Embrace of the Serpent, has made me reflect back...
Coronavirus, Self-Isolation, and the Pragmatic Fatalism of Indigenous Peoples
We usually think about the medical systems of indigenous people in terms of plants, rituals, or shamanic chanting. But one very important health strategy...
Coronavirus Brings Back Memories
Justino Sarmento Rezende, a Salesian priest of the Tuyuka indigenous people from the Upper Rio Negro in northwest Brazil, reflects on the global coronavirus...
Humankind Crowned – Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and...
To put it up front, this essay is not about relativization. I am sitting in my flat, trying to make ends meet between supervising...
Voluntary Isolation in the Age of Coronavirus
While such drastic measures of social distancing are novel and challenging in our hyper-connected contemporary world, indigenous peoples have long used the strategy of...
Kambô, Rapé and Sananga: A Reset on Body, Mind and Vision
On the road opened by the
expansion of ayahuasca in urban centers, other native plants, substances, and
knowledge of the Amazon rainforest came to circulate in...
Mrs. Amada Cardenas: Keeper of the Peyote Gardens
Deep in the heart of South Texas, where
peyote (Lophohora williamsii), the mind-expanding
cactus sacrament grows, is a place known by many as the “Peyote Gardens.”...
The Visionary Art of Mahku – Huni Kuin Artist Movement
Research and Transformation
Huni meka, the songs of nixi pae (ayahuasca), are in the
language of the anaconda; the phrase is from Ibã Huni Kuin....
