2018 – ASOMASHK, Shipibo Shamanic Organization Founded
Following the murder of the Shipibo healer Maestra Olivia Arévalo Lomas by a Canadian ayahuasca tourist, a meeting was called in Yarinacocha among practitioners of ancestral medicine. The meeting discussed the problems and issues arising from the international interest in ayahuasca in the region. From the meeting emerged the Asomashk organization – The Union of Onanyabos and Traditional Medicine Practitioners of the Shipibo-Conibo. The Shipibo-Conibo have long been esteemed for their ancestral knowledge and practice with ayahuasca and they are probably the most internationally famous indigenous group that uses ayahuasca.
You can read the Yarinacocha Declaration in which the Asomashk outline their objectives and plans. As noted at the Shipibo-Conibo Center of New York, the declaration calls “for a politically conscious and anti-colonialist set of practices that take into account power differentials, economic inequality and the social reality of Shipibo communities, given the enormous foreign interest in plant medicine.”
References
Shipibo Conibo Center of New York.
