A Medicine Heritage of 160 Indigenous Peoples: The Origins of Ayahuasca Before Globalization

Daiara Tukano

The forest is diverse, and so are the peoples whose origins include the medicine now popularly known as ayahuasca. However, few know which peoples consume ayahuasca, how we consume it, what territories we occupy, our historical contact with the Western world, and what constitutes our political resistance today.  Faced with a global context in which ayahuasca is currently more accessed by white and economically privileged non-Indigenous people than by Indigenous people, in which academics, scientists, and religious leaders widely discuss the expansion, legalization, democratization, commodification, medicalization, syncretization, and synthesis of medicine, it is necessary to question the importance of the representation and autonomy of Indigenous peoples in the midst of these discussions... continue reading.