Your article (“Ayahuasca Tourism” is a scourge for the original peoples and our environment, June 17It raises important concerns but looks at a very tightly complex issue. It should be noted that the word “ayahuasca” is not a modern invention, but the term Quechua means “the generosity of the soul.” It is just one of the many names used in celebration medicine across different original cultures – others include yagé, kamarampi, Caapi, Oasca and Daime. It indicates that “Hayakwaska” is “correct” only, erasing the diversity of the ancestral traditions across the Amazon basin.
The claim that ayahuasca is marketed as a “mystical abbreviation” that overlooks reality: real work with this drug is neither fast nor easy. A real healing through Ayahuasca includes a deep internal effort, often accompanied by discomfort, surrender and courage – whether one of them is the indigenous population or not.
Critical criticism of cultural distortion and the loss of biological diversity is valid, especially as tourism encourages the illegal wildlife trade. But we must also recognize that many products sold for tourists (such as Jaguar parts) are offered by local individuals. Given their cultural knowledge and contact with the forest, indigenous societies can take leaders to educate both the local population and visitors, and to promote sustainable and moral practices.
To ask, “How to repeat tourists“ Ayaoaska ”?
Enrico Malatesta
Wanay Community Retreat, Mocoa, Colombia
I agree with sincerity with Nina Galinga and Elie Verquina that Ayawooka’s tourism takes the shaman away from their holy work, which is society and the land. I know that, as a Shamanian -based Shami processor, my work is with this land. This brings harmony with the soul.
Plants and trees in any country are the guards of wisdom, and healing cannot occur anywhere, the Earth has not been tilt and healing. This involves the launch of the souls of war, building the empire, restoring guardians on the sacred sites and restoring ourselves to reciprocity.
Knowing our roots and returns them back to the relationship with ourselves. This earth and our hearts need to tend our ancestors now. To include healing to go to Ecuador For spiritual tourism, when there is a lot of grandparents and land that tends to do on our soil, it shows the extent of our separation from the earth and the mother.
We cannot find it anywhere else. The plants of these sacred islands contain a lot of love and wisdom now on our return to Earth as a mother, as a source of love that carries us. The sacred plants of these islands are dandelions, study, dock and nettle – they support us and orientation. Our trees are oak, Birch and Rawan, hawthorn. It is our connection and our relationship with the Earth’s mother and vegetable spirits. A sovereign relationship between us and the earth.
Emily Webster
Lancaster
It is always amazing to get to know such distant indigenous societies, yet you find many common denominators, such as their innate respect for nature. The beginning of modern tourism – which is often attached to “ECO”, “sustainable” and “responsible” by those who exploit the indigenous population – is a common phenomenon.
However, is there less than two evils? “Ayahuasca” in Ecuador, as shown in your article, or in the seizure of residential lands, living and cultures that we see in it Cambodia? The forced assimilation of the main population has been imposed violently during the seventies of the seventies, but it has been worrying since then.
John Lori
Ta, Khamoo, Cambodia
