| SHUAR: talking with Ecuadorian Amazon medicine menback to LifeWeb |rat haus(ASCII text) SHUAR:talking withEcuadorian Amazon medicine menElisabet Sahtouriswith Wendy Girard Nunink, translator The Shuar people live among the Ecuadorian rivers that are headwaters of theAmazon, in the foothills of the Andes, and up to the altiplano highlands ofPeru.Tshuin and the Uwishin TraditionMarcello: Anank, my uncle, and I are both Shuar medicine men, calledcuranderos by the Spanish settlers. In Shuar, the word is uwishin (pronounedoo-wee-sheen')-- a healer who works with medicinal plants and with spiritpowers. It also means "someone who knows all the secrets."An uwishin's knowledge comes from other uwishins, from dreams, fromceremonies, from passing tests, making many sacrifices such as toleratinghunger, thirst, heat and cold, sexual deprivation, from years of learning tolive alone in the jungle, to endure sexual deprivation in order to spendnights on beaches with dangerous animals and through other practicalexperience. A master uwishin creates an evolutionary process in hisapprentice, and during this time the apprentice must have a positive dreamvision of the future.To have become an uwishin is, for me, the best possible legacy I could havereceived from my forefathers, because it enabled me to learn everything thatthey were and that they knew. It is a long and difficult process, one inwhich you receive an entire book of all the knowledge and secrets of nature.It means receiving a new life, discovering a new world you have never seenbefore. It transforms you completely, enabling you to see behind you as wellas before you every obstacle that can possibly present itself to you.It began when I told my father I wanted to drink natem and learn. Because ofmy insistence, my father told me to go participate in the ceremonies. Mycousin Uwishu who was a famous healer from a distant Shuar community gave mepower in a dream. I didn't tell anyone. My mother taught me to heal withplants; my grandmother taught me the chants-- the invocations to the godsand spirits. There were chants of dedication to women, to natural forces andto bring luck in travels and hunting.When the formal training begins, the master uwishin breathes into the crownof the apprentice's head. From that day on you are more peaceful andhealthy. During the years of apprenticeship you learn to fast and then drinkayahuasca, the halucinogenic tea we call natem, and malikawa, anotherhalucinogen with powerful cleansing properties that heal the body like noother, that integrates it holistically. The master uwishin experiences thereality of his apprentice in a single night drinking natem. An uwishin, whomay be a man or a woman, has a great deal of knowledge of medicinal plantswith very powerful cures, through learning from others, and throughexperiments from the plants themselves. One plant, for example, canimmediately remove from the body the venom of vipers such as the coral orlittle green snakes. Yet nature is so diverse we cannot know everything;there is always more to discover, to learn. It is the work of the uwishin tocontinually research and find solutions to illness.To examine a sick patient one must be prepared and conscious of allpossibilities of illness. When you drink natem you see a light clearer thansunlight, and as you chant in front of the patient, you are chanting to thespirits to whom you have dedicated yourself. Then it is not you who arechanting but the spirits which present themselves and sing through you.There are many different songs; no one healer knows them all. Those you knowdepend on the knowledge and discoveries of particular forces of nature youhave made. An uwishin can cure five to ten patients in a single day.There are two kinds of uwishin: benificent and malevolent. The benificentones have learned all manner of cures; the malevolent ones have learned todo various kinds of harm to people. I have dedicated myself totally andsolely to being a benificent uwishin, and have learned this path in six anda half years of training. During all this time I ate little and fastedoften, participating in and conducting many ceremonies, taking much counselfrom my fathers and grandfathers, and from my elder brother Mased. Iabstained from eating the heavier animal fats and have been without a womanfor three years; I have overcome many obstacles in my journets into theforest. It is not an easy path, for there are many distractions. I have beenhelped most by the Creator Arutam and by my dreams.There are two kinds of illnesses a healer finds in his patients: one kind isinduced by a malevolent uwishin, the other kind is due to microbes and otherinfections from the environment. Both types respond to our deep forms oftreatment. In the world there are many types of curanderos, xamans and othermedicine people, but it seems that relatively few of them really dedicatethemselves purely to healing people. Many nowadays have become concernedwith making money. In my own village there are uwishins with otherintentions; very few are dedicated to healing and helping those who need it.Some have secret personal weapons and knowledge, some can divine the future.The most famous Shuar healer of all was my grandmother's grandfather,Tshuin. An important part of the training of an uwishin, is going to liveunder the waters of a river with a tshunqui (Tshoong-kwee)-- a mermaid withwhom he makes a pact and who becomes his wife and mentor for this period oftraining. While Tshuin stayed in the water with the tshunqui he made a pactwith, she killed a boa and fed it to him. Shuar people never eat boa,because it is sacred, but to the mermaid it was meat, like pork. (Shuar alsodo not eat pork, because it is considered dangerous meat, breeding disease.)The tshunqui brought pieces of boa meat to Tshuin as gifts and he ate them.When he returned to his own home, he had an insatiable thirst. He had takenon the great thirst of a boa, which spends much time in the water and drinksa great deal.When Shuar men return to their homes from work, they sit and drink chicha, akind of fermented root beer. Shuar wives never fail to make plenty of chichafor their men. But Tshuin could not tell his wife of the terrible thirst,because the tshunqui had forbidden him ever to tell anyone of his pact withher.Anank: My mother told me women must always stay ready and alert until 3:00in the morning to offer chicha.Marcello: Tshuin became the greatest uwishin of the Amazon Shuar, goingamong all the Shuar communities where he was called to heal the most seriousillnesses. In time, others grew jealous of his powers and his fame. Finally,men of his own family assassinated him and shrunk his head, celebrating thefestival of head shrinking that honors the valor and prowess of those whokill a powerful man. Even today, whenever an uwishin becomes verysuccessful, another uwishin of a different Shuar family can become jealous,so danger to the powerful continues to exist in our culture even though weno longer shrink heads.Traditionally, when the land no longer produces abundantly-- when the fishpopulation is reduced and the land does not bear enough fruit-- the Shuarmoved to new locations, carrying shrunken heads with them. Sometimes theyhad to hide or abandon them for fear of colonists who came looking for suchheads to sell.Anank: Each of us knows our own history. Tshuin was the cousin of my mother,who died this past December at the age of 119. Shuar people often live up to120. While Tshuin was very important and powerful, he was actually verymodest. He could heal a person simply by touching them and blowing on them.That is why people became so fearful of him. He studied the psyche of theShuar; there had never been anyone like him before.Marcello: Tshuin passed his powers on to a son he had with the tshunqui,born in the waters and given the Spanish name of Pasqual, brought to theShuar by Spanish Conquistador priests. My grandmother was the daughter ofPasqual, so we have this heritage in my family. In each generation there issomeone with this knowledge who then passes it on to another, even to a newbaby by blowing on it. The child will grow up having the visions, and whenit can reason, it will ask its father (or whoever passed on the knowledge)what he is doing when healing or in ceremony. The child will then be takento the waterfalls where Arutam the Creator lives, and to the rivers forprivate instruction. That is the way the tradition is kept without loss fromgeneration to generation. This is how it was passed on to me.While I was in training, I led a very natural, healthy life in the forest:there was much walking, fasting, sleeping on the banks of rivers anddrinking ayahuasca-- the halucinogenic tea that is important for contactwith the spirit beings that protect us. The Shuar name for it is natem.Thanks to the Father Creator Arutam and to my own father who taught me tomake sacrifices-- to bear hunger and thirst, heat and cold, to overcome manyobstacles-- I became an uwishin.Anank: My father was not a medicine man; my heritage came through mymother's lineage. The uwishins are much revered because they are thesalvation of the Shuar people. They can also be terrifying. I know a womanwho is an uwishin and so is her husband. They are absolutely formidable. Inmy culture, we have studied the psychology of women. They are more moresensitive and can be more venomous. We do not want to do damage in oursociety, so we are very careful in training women. When women ask us totrain them, we do not readily do so because they can be more powerful thanmen; they have access to secrets that we do not have. Also, women's extremesensibility and volatility combined with their frailty makes them dangerousif they become venomous. It takes tremendous self-control to be an uwishinand not many women are capable of it.YerushAnank: I am the youngest of my mother's ten children, and was taken out ofmy family by the missionaries around the age of fourteen. This was our firstcontact with the outside world. My brother, Huank, who was also taken away,had been given a nickname as a child: they called him Yerush, meaning armyant. To be a yerush is to be a member of an immense and powerful family.Many years later, when Huank (whom the missionaries renamed Luis) was overforty, with a wife and children, he came to live in a town where there weremany Shuar. No one recognized him until one of the old people of his ownfamily figured out that he was the boy called Yerush, Nunink's son. Theyrejoiced, saying his name had protected him and helped him survive.They tookhim to his father's grave, where he had never been. He cried and cried onthis great day of family reunion, everyone consoling each other after solong a separation.When Yerush was only eight years old, he made a very small dugout canoe allby himself. We lived on the Santiago River which is very wide in places andhas many rapids. When my brother finished the canoe, he was challenged tocarry out the heritage of his name and his family by crossing the river init. If he made it through the rapids, he would live up to his name! Since hewas a crazy kid, he responded to the challenge. People watched and waited onboth banks of the river. He could easily have been killed, but he wasfearless and he made it.CalendarMarcello: Our ancient calendar had ten months, with ten-day weeks of nameddays. We also had names for the stars, including the Sun, and the planets.Our numbers were originally limited to ten, as counted on fingers. When wewent into the forest for the festival of the palm or the festival of theshrunken head, it would take many days. We took a green plantain with us andwhen it had ripened we knew one week had passed and it was time to go home.Sunrise to sunset for us is just twelve hours as we have equal length daysand nights year round. We measured our travels; in one day we could walkforty kilometers.Now we use the standard calendar and begin the Shuar year in January, thoughwe call it Itza, meaning Sun. The Sun is the son of the Earth Mother in ourculture, so Itza is similar to the Christ Child. We are three degrees southof the Equator, so we do not have summer and winter seasons, only rainy anddry, or less rainy. Itza is a relatively dry month when the Moon is biggest,so we cultivate and sow our gardens; then, in the month you call February,the rains come and the frogs come out. In March and April the plants grow;in May and June we harvest our crops, celebrating the Festival of Chanta,the palm, whose growth tells us when to harvest.July and August are a time of more festivals, followed by a period of restduring Sseptember and October. Toward the end of the year we usually movedto a new place, hunting and visiting along the way. Sometimes there wereterritorial wars during this time, sometimes wars between jealous uwishins.It was also a time for taking "the rapture of the women," a time forcourting. We have a special musical instrument, a one-stringed bow, used tocall the women we love.About WomenAnank: I got my stories from the old people; Marcello studied the scientificstories of anthropologists as well. I learned that the Shuar people came toEcuador and Peru where they now live from two directions: some from the Eastand South, from what is now Uruguay and some from the North. The Shuar wereoriginally peaceful people and never married outside their tribe. Meetingother tribes was difficult because they had other costumes and customs andlanguages.Among the Shuar there were more men than women. Long ago, boy children werepreferred and from infancy they were taught to make arms. Because there werefewer women, they could not let other tribes take women. It was necessary todefend them. Basically, the Shuar were pacifists with high spiritualdevelopment and visions. But the theft of their women made them terrifyingand formidable warriors. Revenge for touching a Shuar woman was to get thehead of the offending tribe's chief. However peaceful the Shuar naturallywere, when they were crossed they did not give up until fully avenged. Theyshrank the enemy chief's head, then danced a celebration of love, peace andunderstanding.Known as invincible because they always completed their missions or foughttill they died, the Shuar were unique in many ways, as, for example, inbeing the only head shrinkers. It was also the genetic heritage of the Shuarto have more male children. Because there were fewer women, men were neededas warriors to protect them, and long ago the boys were preferred. But thischanged, and later, when a girl child was born, a Shuar father devoted hislife to her. When a woman was pregnant, a young Shuar man would ask herparents for her hand. When she was five months pregnant, he went to livewith her family and hunted, fished and provided for them to make sure shewas his woman.Marcello: In our culture we do not have competition among entrepreneurs, asin yours, but from an early age we compete to win over young people toprotect our families, our women. This is our ancestral heritage.Anank: Reverence for women became a very strong part of Shuar culture andwas important to our evoutionary growth and transcendance. The Shuar thoughta long time about the girl baby problem and proved themselves to God bytaking better care of women. Now equal numbers of boy and girl babies areborn. This is the myth the old people told me of how the Shuar came torevere women:How the Shuar Came to Revere WomenLong ago in antiquity, Shuar men had breasts and women did not. Women werekilled in childbirth and the men nursed the babies, who were cut out oftheir mothers' bellies when it was time for them to be born. One day apregnant woman whose baby was almost ready to be born was tending hergarden. All around her were a kind of delicious ground nut, nearly ready toharvest. It was important to know exactly when they were ripe, because theywould all be eaten by rats if the people did not harvest them quickly. Thewoman's husband had told her to go and test the nuts while he went to gatherfirewood.While the woman stood in the field, nibbling the nuts and crying, nibblingand crying, a rat appeared before her. "What are you doing?" the rat asked."Why are you crying?" The woman answered, "I have come to test the nuts.Tomorrow they will be ripe and tomorrow I will give birth. So, tomorrow Iwill die." The rat looked up at the woman and said, "Don't cry. I will saveyour life. You will become like me, as strong as I am. Female animals do notdie when they give birth, and so they have long lives." Then the ratgathered up all the nuts and gave them to the woman, telling her to eat sothat she would get strong. "How can you, a rat, save my life?" the womanasked. "Why do you want to save my life?"As the woman ate she grew stronger. Then the rat told her to go home to herhusband. "You will have no problem. Do not tell him anything. Just say thenuts are ready for harvest and then come back to me." So the women went hometo her husband, who was piling up the kindling he had gathered for the fire.He knew there must be a fire to keep the baby warm when he took it into hisbed to nurse it. The woman told her husband the nuts were ripe and ready toharvest. Then she slipped out of the house again and ran back to the fieldwhere the rat was waiting.The rat explained to the woman that among his people, the women gave birthto their babies by themselves , even to many babies at a time. Then the ratseized the woman by her belly, twisting it and making her begin to givebirth. "Push and push," the rat told her, until her baby was born. The rattook the baby and wrapped it in a big plantain leaf. "Take the baby back toyour husband now, and do not be afraid," the rat said as he handed her thechild. "You are as strong now as a rat."When the woman got back to her house she saw her husband had built the fireand was sweating as he brandished the big machete, waiting for her to comehome. When he saw her with the baby and understood what had happened, he wasfurious. "You have betrayed me!" he shouted, and in his rage he took themachete and cut off his own breasts, one after the other. Then he flung themat the woman. In this moment, everything changed forever after for all theShuar people, for the husband knew instantly that woman must be honored andrespected, her rights and her dignity upheld. Ever since that day it hasbeen the duty of all Shuar men to protect and revere their women.I learned this story from my people. Very little of my education comes frombooks, almost everything came from practical experience. My mother taught meto weave, to make baskets, to make pottery and musical instruments. Shuaruwishins have to weave their own skirts; men teach us to make weapons. Ibecame a car mechanic later, also through practical experience.Women make Shuar pottery. They dry it onthe rafters of smoke hgouses for asmuch as four or five months, then pile the pots into a small mountain andcover it with firewood. The pots glow like hot coals during the firing. Thenthe women carry them carefully back to their houses and decorate them withbeautiful designs of faces, flowers and other things. Women who decoratepots with great dedication are most prized as wives. Men hope they will showthe same dedication to them as husbands.Marcello: Traditionally the Shuar have protected women carefully. Uwishinsoften married widows; it is also customary for younger brothers to marry thewidows of elder brothers. My father, for instance, married three sisters. Ifone of my elder brothers dies, I will have the obligation to marry hiswife-- at least this has been the custom until this generation. Theeducation and experience of my generation is changing things.In terms of my own education, since I began to adapt myself to the westernworld, I have always been interested in reading, curious to learn. But Ialso learned in other ways from my Shuar people and from dreams, as I saidbefore. When I was six years old, I already had the obligation to assist atCatholic Mass and to speak Spanish. I was not allowed to speak Shuar, but atthis age I had a very real dream about going to the river and seeing a stoneroll down to the bank. I stood there wondering why it had rolled down andthen realized it was not real, but a vision. The stone talked to me, saying,"I am a very valiant man. I am also eternal, a supreme principle. I am theSource."I loved studying and wanted to travel and know new places. After my primaryeducation I went back to my people to study with the uwishins as I describedearlier. Then, later, I went to a city with a large Shuar population tostudy. The teachers were Hispanic and deprecated our Shuar culture, but Idemonstrated my abilities and won their confidence. When I was seventeen, mycommunity made me director of programs; I facilitated conferences, directednative festivals and sports events. In high school I won a medal running.After high school I continued my apprenticeship as an uwishin.After all these spiritual journeys and years of training I had the greatestdream vision of my life. After twenty hours of walking through the junglewithout food, taking only natem, tobacco and the cleansing herb malikawa, Ihad the dream of a very large city. I never knew where it was until I camehere and saw surely that it was Los Angeles.I came to this country to help my people. I knew their problems would growgreater and greater and I wanted to be able to help solve them. My familyand my Pikiur Shuar community sent me here with one great objective: torepresent them in the defense of my forest and my community. I am gratefulto my Father God Arutam for giving me the energy and the capacity tocontinue, for guiding me and giving me help in every moment. I am very farfrom my family and because I am human I have a great longing for them.Fortunately, an uwishin can communicate with his family at a great distance,and from his dreams he can know what their situation is. I will try to befaithful to the philosophy of my people, to keep moving forward and not fallbehind, to overcome all obstacles no matter how great.Indigenous peoples are not participating in the decisions of nations, yet weare a natural part of Mother Earth and have human rights. For fifteen yearsnow I have been practising what I learned in my training as an uwishin, frommy life as a Shuar and from experiences outside my own culture. I have manyideas and plans for the future. I want to return to my people to help savethe forest which is the planet's breath and the basis for the life of mypeople.I would like to proclaim my respect for you, Elisabet. You are a very selectwoman for me because I have come to know you and my special appreciation foryou is engraved on my mind. Tonight the world of my life and of yours havebecome united to create history that is now eternal. I will always hold youin my mind as a symbol of brother/sisterhood. I have learned what your owntalent is; you were born to know many people of the world. Thank you forcoming to me here in Los Angeles, for writing of my life. When I return tomy country and my people, I will carry your name engraved in my mind witheternal gratitude every day from now on.back to LifeWeb |rat haus |Index |Search |tree |
|
