Peru 'must protect Amazon tribes'

By Dan Collyns
Reposted From: BBC News

Illegal logging is harming isolated Amazonian tribes people Peru must act swiftly to protect isolated Amazonian tribes from illegal loggers, Latin America's top human rights body has ruled.

Indigenous leaders say the tribes have already suffered untold deaths from diseases contracted from outsiders.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights judged the risk to these isolated communities so great that it bypassed all the usual procedures.

Peru has been given two weeks to take steps to protect the isolated tribes.
If it fails to do so it could ultimately be subject to economic sanctions.

Profitable business

The pan-American human rights body says that although Peru has created reserves for the indigenous communities who live in voluntary isolation, it does nothing to protect them from gangs of illegal loggers who are chopping down the mahogany-rich forests in which they live.
Indigenous leaders say several loggers have been killed in confrontations with the tribes in the last few years.

But they fear many more of the jungle dwellers have died through enslavement, violence or from contracting illnesses from which they have no immunity.

The steady advance of logging has forced the isolated groups, among them the Mashco-Piro and Yora tribes, deeper into Peru's jungle frontier with Brazil and Bolivia.

The hugely profitable but illicit business sees most of the tropical hardwoods exported to the United States.

This has forced the Peruvian state to take notice.

The Democrat-controlled US Congress has said it cannot ratify a free trade agreement with Peru until makes certain changes, among them adopting and enforcing laws on logging mahogany.

Earlier this week, the Peruvian President Alan Garcia provoked criticism from environmentalists when he said the quantity of mahogany which left the country, legally or not, was insignificant.

To many human rights workers the president's statement confirmed their suspicion that there is little political will to tackle the illegal trade and the isolated people's reserves might not be worth the paper they are written on.

Uncontacted Tribes at Risk of Extinction Ten Years On

Reposted from: SURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE

28 March 2007

PERU: UNCONTACTED TRIBES AT RISK OF EXTINCTION TEN YEARS ON

Some of the world's last uncontacted tribes are at risk of extinction despite the creation of two reserves for them ten years ago on April 1 1997.

The tribes are known as the Murunahua and Mashco-Piro, and together they number around 600 people.

Their territories are being invaded by hundreds of illegal loggers exploiting some of the world's last commercially-viable mahogany reserves. 90% of the timber is exported to the USA. The loggers regularly encounter uncontacted Indians.

The Indians are particularly vulnerable to any form of contact because of their lack of immunity to outsiders' diseases. After some Murunahua were first contacted by loggers in 1996, more than 50% of them died.

'They are there, living deeper in the jungle,' said Juan, one of the Muruanahua survivors, speaking about the uncontacted Murunahua. 'They're not members of our family, but separate. They live in the forest.'

Survival's Director, Stephen Corry, said today, 'These are Peru's most vulnerable citizens and at the moment these reserves aren't worth the paper they're written on. Unless the government actually removes the loggers and stops others from entering, the uncontacted Indians are likely to be wiped out.'

-ENDS-

For more information call Miriam Ross on + 44 207 687 8734
To read this press release online visit: Survival International

First Indigenous Tribunal of the Ucayali

As a follow-up and outcome to the Village Earth Regional Organizational workshop in January 2007, a group of Shipibo leaders have decided to hold the first ever 'Indigenous Tribunal' as they call it. This Tribunal will be a gathering of leaders from all 120 Shipibo communities throughout the region. They are also inviting local NGOs and leaders from other regional indigenous groups such as the Ashaninka. This is an event of historic importance because the Shipibo have not had a regional meeting of this magnitude for over 30 years, and even then never did it have the possibility for such far-reaching impacts as the Indigenous Tribunal being organized at present.

Below: Participants in the January workshop who were elected to the Transitory Committee responsible for organizing the Indigenous Tribunal.

The organizers of this event have asked Village Earth to be a co-facilitator - to continue with a regional visioning process with the participation of all delegates present at the Tribunal. This will be the largest strategic planning that the Village Earth team has done to-date and could possibly have the most far-reaching impacts as well. 480 leaders are estimated to attend this event representing around 40,000 indigenous peoples throughout the Ucayali region. All parties involved hope that this will be the key event in mobilizing and organizing the region to begin the process of a truly community-based, sustainable form of alternative "development" - to empower the region toward active self-determination.

The Shipibo people realized that only by working together at the regional level will they ever really be able to implement their own vision for the future based on the values and wisdom of the majority indigenous population of the region. Some of the specific objectives as written in their project plan are as follows:

• To bring together leaders, authorities, students, technicians, and indigenous professionals of the region to search together the true development of the indigenous population with a united organization with strategic allies both national and international
  


• To inform and motivate the jefes (chiefs) of the communities about the importance of cultural revival and the care of our lands
  


• To achieve the participation and commitment of the jefes and leaders of the indigenous communities to form a work group for environmental conservation and sustainable development


• To strengthen the communication channel between indigenous and foreign organizations for the development of our communities.

Art and cultural performances will also play a big part in the three-day Tribunal with cultural and artistic presentations planned each evening and also for the opening and closing ceremonies.

Above: This group of orphaned children will be performing traditional Shipibo song and dance at the June event.

The organizing committee of the Tribunal is building off of the transnational legal framework that is currently so popular in the discourse about indigenous rights. For example:

• International Labour Organization Convention 169
• Declaration of the First International Decade of Indigenous Peoples
• Declaration of the Second International Decade of Indigenous Peoples
• Proposal of Regimen of the Protection of Collective Knowledge of Indigenous Peoples of INDECOPÍ
• Law N° 22175 of Native Communities
• Declaration of Río de Janeiro in 1992
• Summit of the Americas, Miami; 1994
  
• Declaration for the Summit of Sustainable Development in Santa Cruz de la Sierra 1996
• Summit of Santiago 1997
• Agenda 21 (Cap. 25 and 26)National Strategy for the participation in Sustainable Development (OFA)
  

The organizing committee writes, "In the last 50 years, the Amazonian cultures have been suffering from an aggressive Western acculturation. The [Peruvian] government underwent a neoliberal political shift without considering the consequences upon the indigenous peoples. Many indigenous peoples were forced to leave their cultures as they migrated to the big cities in search of a better opportunity." The objective of the Tribunal is so "that the communities be the protagonists of their own development, and the local, national, and foreign authorities take care of and support us in our own program of development."

Five themed expositions will be presented during the Tribunal:

1. The Role of the Jefes
   
2. Indigenous Reality
   
3. The Political Situation
   
4. National Political and Economic Reality
   
5. United Communities
   

At the end of the event, there will be an election of leaders to form the new grassroots regional organization of indigenous peoples.

This is such an important event for the future of indigenous self-determination throughout the Peruvian Amazon. Please help us to support the Shipibo by making a financial contribution today. The estimated budget for the Tribunal is approximately $9000 USD in order to provide food and transportation for even the most remote community leaders to be able to attend. As well, the organizing committee is undertaking an extensive media campaign and hopes to print posters, invitations to regional leaders, and hold press conferences.

Please help us support the future generations of Shipibo leaders and the ecological integrity of the Amazon Basin.

If you interested in supporting the Shipibo's efforts at organizing the region, you can contribute directly through Pay Pal on the website. Or you can send a check or money order to:

Village Earth

P.O. Box 797

Fort Collins, CO 80522 USA

or call the Village Earth office at: +1-970-491-5754 to make a contribution using your credit card.

If you would like more information about the Indigenous Tribunal in June, please contact: Kristina Pearson

Shipibo Regional Organizational Workshop

Above: Enjoying a relaxing evening after the workshop.

Village Earth was asked by some prominent Shipibo leaders a few months back to facilitate another regional workshop this time with more of an emphasis on intercommunity cooperation. So the Village Earth team returned for a 7-day workshop in early January. Twenty-four Shipibo leaders participated representing six communities in four different districts throughout the Ucayali. The workshop began with a review of past Village Earth-Shipibo collaborations and a viewing of the Village Earth/Shipibo documentary film, "The Children of the Anaconda". Then we began a district-wide mapping session so community members would be begin to think beyond their own borders. This brought up an array of environmental issues as participants discussed sharing forest and river resources with neighboring communities, but also the destruction being wrought by logging and oil companies in the region.

Below: Shipibo children participated by drawing their own map of their community and then presented it to the group. For community initiatives to be truly sustainable, children, too, must always be involved in the process.

Village Earth would like to facilitate collaboration between our project partners, and both the Lakota and Shipibo have expressed much interest in working together in the future as they face many of the same issues being the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas. We decided to do a viewing of the Village Earth-produced documentary film "Rezonomics" which highlights the economic situation on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Although they inhabit vastly different environments, the Shipibo found many similarities in their struggles and learned from the Lakota new ways to think about many of their issues.

This was followed by a discussion on the roles and activities of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in Shipibo country. This led to a very interesting discussion about NGOs and top-down funding models which many times inhibits NGOs from being responsive to community needs and truly participatory community-based development. The Shipibo have dealt with NGO after NGO letting them down with failed promises. However, this is not purely the fault of the NGO. The Shipibo, too, recognize that they need to be proactive and organized when soliciting the assistance of NGOs. Only when both parties are in consensus and work through the Shipibo model of community organization is there the potential to have successful collaborations.

This led us to the discussion of 'So, what has been successful?' What has worked before and how did they organize to make it happen? This is an important part of the Village Earth process because we want to encourage communities to build off of past successes instead of reinventing the wheel each time. Many community projects had been successful before - from communal construction projects to fish farms. Then we questioned, "How did the communities organize themselves in order to make these projects happen?"

Above: One influential Shipibo leader, Limber Gomez, draws out the model of intra and inter-community governance that the Shipibo people use to organize themselves. This highlighted the disconnect between the way NGOs were entering the communities and beginning their work and the way in which Shipibo communities build consensus and participation for projects.

Shipibo communities already have their own consensus-building processes in which the community authorities hold assemblies where everybody is welcomed and encouraged to attend. From this point, committees are democratically-elected to take on different project aspects which then report back to the authorities and the community during the assemblies. They have their own treasurers and methods for financial accountability. Although this seems like such common sense, it is surprising how many outsiders come in thinking they have the answers or that the Shipibo don't know how to manage their own finances or run their own projects. Yet, the Shipibo are actually running their community affairs with incredible organizational capacity which is only disrupted when outsiders try to impose top-down funding and project management.

We then began the strategic planning session with a five-year vision emphasizing regional unity. This was really a question from the heart - what do they really feel for their community and their people, as opposed to just thinking about what material goods they would like to have. This really forced them to look deep inside themselves to come up with their comprehensive vision collectively. Their vision consisted of four main emphasis areas: Community Development, Formation of Shipibo Professionals (business leaders, doctors, engineers, lawyers), Cultural Revival, and the creation of Micro-enterprises.

This led to the question, "What obstacles are holding you back from achieving your vision?" The participants really focused on obstacles they could change themselves instead of focusing on larger global systemic issues that might seem more daunting to overcome. We then moved onto Strategic Directions where participants looked at what they can do in the next year to overcome their obstacles and begin to move toward their vision. The Strategic Directions really got the participants involved and thinking about what they can actually do to achieve their own vision for the future.

Below: All participants were involved in putting their ideas onto the board throughout the visioning process. These young men were rearranging the group's ideas into coherent groupings for the Strategic Directions phase of the workshop.

Finally, the workshop reached its pinnacle in the Action Planning phase. Participants mapped out their plans for the next three months - practical actions that they can actually take to move toward their vision and be active agents in their own "development" process. Eight aspects were deemed the most important areas for action. They are:

• First and foremost -- protect and defend Shipibo territory
  


• Broader regional unity
  


• Cultural revival
  


• University scholarships for their children
  


• Small business development
  


• An Indigenous Bank to facilitate economic development
  


• Promoting indigenous foods for better nutrition
  


• Shipibo-run radio stations broadcasting throughout the region
  

A committee was formed for each of these eight areas, tasks were assigned, timelines and budgets were drawn up, and finally they were presented back to the group.

Above: Leaders of the group planning actions to protect indigenous territory present their plan back to the group for approval.

These eight areas will be further discussed in forthcoming Blog postings. A Transitory Committee was democratically-elected amongst the participants (with at least one representative of each community present in the workshop) to hold an Indigenous Tribunal in June. This June event will be the follow-up to this workshop and it is Village Earth's great honor that the Shipibo have asked Village Earth to return and co-facilitate this historic event. The Tribunal will be a gathering of Indigenous leaders from all 120 Shipibo communities, as well as other regional indigenous groups, to discuss their own alternative plan for "A Better Ucayali".

All in all, this Regional Organizational Workshop was an incredibly empowering event and a great learning experience for all involved. The Shipibo have expressed to the Village Earth team how happy and grateful they are for our support for their self-determination. Yet, when we asked "Who came up with this plan?", the participants realized that it was completely decided and directed by them with Village Earth only providing the framework from which to begin to question and think about some of these important issues.

Village Earth is honored to work with these amazing individuals that participated in this workshop and the Shipibo people as a whole. And we feel privileged to be invited to co-facilitate their landmark Indigenous Tribunal in June 2007.

Above: Village Earth facilitators Kristina Pearson and David Bartecchi dance with the group as the Shipibo band plays in the background. The community organized a farewell party on the last evening of the workshop to celebrate the achievements of the group.

Below: A special thank you to Mayer Kirkpatrick, Mateo Arevalo, and Freddy Arevalo for their hardwork and dedication to this project.




Above: Thank you to Ralf (Village Earth's media specialist), and Chloe (Village Earth's Poet Laureate) for their hardwork and help throughout the workshop.

Below: A very special thank you to Flora - an amazing volunteer who gave so much of her time to help with translations and facilitating the workshop.

And most of all - THANK YOU to all of our donors - without you none of this would have been possible!

Tourism Opens New Doors, Creates New Challenges, for Traditional Healers in Peru

By Proctor, Rachel

January 31, 2001 Cultural Survival Quarterly Issue 24.4

Mateo Arevalo, 43, was born into a family of traditional healers, or curanderos, in the Shipibo community of San Francisco de Yarinacocha in Peru. When he decided to follow in his father's footsteps and learn curandismo, he was taught to prepare a ceremonial drink from a woody vine scientists call Banisteriopsis caapi and curanderos call "ayahuasca," a Quechua word meaning "vine of the soul." He drank the brew regularly during his two-year training period to induce physical purging and intense visions of the spirit world. It was the spirits that provided his real training and that allow him and other curanderos to diagnose and treat patients.

While Arevalo's forefathers put such knowledge to local use, generally treating their neighbors on a pro bono basis, Arevalo is proud to apply it to a wider audience. When foreigners started showing up in San Francisco about 10 years ago seeking the hallucinogen for healing, enlightenment, or a good trip, he took advantage of the opportunity to earn extra income. He now leads posh ayahuasca retreats in jungle lodges for foreigners, and hosts shamanism students in his home for three- or six-month courses.

"I am an innovator, adding to my ancestral knowledge," he explains. "We, the Shipibos, are like any other human community -- we need to grow and change. We can't just stay the same so that the tourists can stare at the naked Indians in feathers and the anthropologists can treat us like a living museum." Arevalo's innovations let him earn $200 per month from shamanism students and $30 per person for one-time ceremonies while most of his neighbors hawk handicrafts for pennies. And he is not the only shaman to bring in such sums. Ayahuasca has shown itself capable of summoning more than visions and spirits -- it also calls an ever-growing number of new-agers and thrillseekers willing to pay $30-$50 for a night's work. Ayahuasca ceremonies can be purchased in most major tourist destinations in Peru, and numerous jungle lodges now offer ceremonies or retreats, the latter costing in the neighborhood of $700-$1,500 a week.

But ayahuasca's new marketability has brought traditional healing to a dangerous crossroads. Tourist dollars could allow shamans to support themselves while continuing to treat their neighbors for little or nothing, but it could just as easily allow a privileged few to abandon their communities for a more affluent life in tourist towns or jungle lodges.

It is ironic that even a decade ago the main threat to traditional healing was lack of interest. Traditional shamanism promised little in the way of material rewards to young Shipibos all too aware of the need for jobs that pay cash. Leslie Taylor, an American specialist in rainforest plants, says that only a minority of shamans she met in her trips to the Amazon had apprentices. "A lot of the shamans didn't have apprentices because [traditional healing] was considered old knowledge, and the kids wanted what was new," she says. "They wanted what the outsiders had, what was in the city: the radios, the colored flip-flops. They didn't want to stay in the jungle and learn traditional medicine when Western pharmaceuticals seemed to work much faster."

Arevalo agrees that the young were never interested in his work -- until now. These days, he receives many requests for training from young Shipibos who see the possibilities in a bottle of ayahuasca. Interest in healing, on the other hand, is still on the wane. "The young who ask me to teach them do not want to be curanderos," said Arevalo, who insists that his work with tourists does not interfere with his commitment to the health of the community. "They are only interested in giving ayahuasca to the tourists."

The problem is not innovation per se. It is that once a shaman has innovated, a whole new world opens to him, one that often separates him from his community. Antonio Muñoz hopes to carry tradition into modernity. The 40-year-old shaman learned traditional healing from his father, but never practiced because, as he says, "to be a traditional doctor in the village is to live in the worst possible poverty." He moved to Lima, where he met psychotherapist Pio Vucetich. The two now offer therapy in which patients take ayahuasca as a tool for analysis and as a way to confront their fears and traumas. "My work is much more sophisticated than that of other curanderos," he says. "In traditional healing, the shaman took the ayahuasca to acquire the powers of the plants: to diagnose the illness and discover a cure. But how much more effective will it be if the patient takes the medicine himself? I give ayahuasca like any other doctor gives a prescription." Muñoz, like Arevalo, considers his work an innovation that combines the best of the old with the best of the new. He thinks those who don't incorporate outside elements into their healing are hopelessly stuck in the past. "Other curanderos need to learn from the science of psychotherapy to better treat their patients," he says. "We need to advance, to offer our alternative healing to the whole world." Even so, he himself does not work with members of his community because he finds there is no demand for his "sophisticated" technique in San Francisco. He spends most of his time treating his regular patients in Lima, or wealthy Peruvians or foreigners on special week-long sessions (cost, $500) in San Francisco. Why should he stay in the village, argues Muñoz, when there are so many who appreciate his technique in the cities? The question arises: what will happen to the sick in the communities if the shamans are all at international ayahuasca conventions?

Even if practitioners of traditional medicine do move away from healing and into tourism, it would seem at first glance that ayahuasca tourism can, at the very least, help to preserve a tradition that might otherwise be forgotten. But because foreign consumers of ayahuasca often come with romanticized images of what a South American shaman should be, shamans have an incentive to alter their discourse to fit expectations. Federica LeClerc, a French anthropologist studying the use of medicinal plants by Shipibo women, says that this is already a common phenomenon, and one that she considers to bring some positive results. "The Shipibos are very assimilated," says LeClerc. "The healers use the Bible, which isn't `really' part of their culture, but for them, it's as traditional as anything else. Then foreigners come, only looking for the natural, and the shamans change what they're saying to please them. So in some ways, tourism is bringing about a recovery of the past." At the same time, new foreign elements are becoming a part of the practice of some shamans. The Lima-based organization Ayahuasca-Wasi, for example, offers week-long experimental seminars in "Amazonian Shamanism" which also include meditation and "Tibetan Philosophy centered on Impermanence." Arevalo has found the need to incorporate such ideas to please his customers. He feels, however, that this syncretism is part of his human right to increase his knowledge and that it is a positive exchange of information between cultures.

One foreign element that no one appreciates, however, is outsides' desire to capitalize on interest in ayahuasca without providing any benefits to the community. The most egregious example is the 1986 U.S. patent on ayahuasca by an American pharmacology student. Under pressure from indigenous groups, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 1999 rejected the patent, but the Committee for International Environmental Law, which represented the indigenous groups, argues that the patent was overturned on a narrow technicality that does not provide sufficient protection of indigenous groups' biological knowledge.

In addition to concerns over compensation for their intellectual property, the patent's challengers warned that removing the plant from its traditional role could have devastating results, citing the existing gulf between the traditional use of the coca leaf in the Andes and the abuse of cocaine in the North. Just which adaptations and innovations are appropriate is a matter of considerable debate. The older generation of shamans in San Francisco, those who continue to heal their neighbors (or at least learned to do so, even if it no longer fits easily into their schedules), unanimously found ayahuasca-selling by those who do not heal inappropriate. Muñoz, who does not give ayahuasca recreationally, considers any ayahuasca tourism without a healing element to be a misuse. "If you go to the doctor, it's because you're sick," he said. "But sadly, in our country curanderos give ayahuasca to any tourist who asks for it. Ayahuasca should not be used as a recreational drug."

Taylor argues that as more and more people from the North seek out natural remedies to physical ailments, some profit-seeking shamans may sham "medical" treatments, which she considers not only inappropriate, but dangerous. "I met a woman who had all kinds of health problems -- she was a year out of a kidney transplant and could barely walk," she says. "Ayahuasca is incredibly hard on the body, especially the liver and kidneys, and this is why in traditional healing it is the shaman who takes ayahuasca, not the patient. But this woman was in contact with a shaman who wanted to give her ayahuasca in a healing ceremony. To give ayahuasca to someone that sick would have been criminal."

Straddling the past and the future is Rodolfo Valles, one of the rare young Shipibos learning curandismo in San Francisco. Throughout his life he has seen his father curing members of his community free of charge. Now, at 19, he has begun the fasting and ayahuasca-induced training sessions that will culminate in his first healing, which he hopes he will achieve within a year. He plans to earn the money he needs to buy that which the jungle does not provide by teaching languages in a nearby mestizo town, and thinks any shaman who charges for his services is a fraud. Yet when asked if he would do ceremonies for tourists if the opportunity arose, he demonstrates conflicted feelings. "It makes me ashamed when shamans charge the tourists for their ceremonies," Valles says. "But if people want to know about our reality and about Shipibo culture, I want to show them." He plans to get around his moral qualms by adopting the technique of many shamans: requesting a voluntary donation rather than charging a set fee. Furthermore, he insists that his primary concern will always be the sick in his community. "I want to be a shaman because I want to help people," he says. "I see so many needs in my community, so many sick people who can't afford medicine at the pharmacy."

The question remains as to what Valles will do once the opportunity to work with foreigners does arrive. It is a poignant question, for as Arevalo said, why shouldn't a shaman innovate? Why shouldn't he profit materially from his knowledge? If Valles is like the rest of the shamans of San Francisco, he will say yes to the foreigners. And hopefully he will fulfill his dream of continuing to say yes to his neighbors. If shamans are too busy entertaining tourists to help their communities, one can't say that a tradition has been preserved. It will have mutated into an empty commercial endeavor that does little to preserve Shipibo heritage or help the community as a whole.

References & further reading

Interviews (all interviews took place in the year 2000):
Mateo Arevalo, shaman, Pucallpa, April 2; Yarinacocha, April 12
Federica LeClerc, anthropologist, Yarinacocha, April 1
Antonio Muñoz, shaman, San Francisco de Yarinacocha, April 7
Lucio Muñoz, shaman, San Francisco de Yarinacocha, April 6
Martin Muñoz Pacalla, shaman, San Francisco de Yarinacocha, April 6
Gilber Reategui Sangama, son of mestizo shaman, Nueva Luz de Fatima, Ap. 4
Alberto Reategui Silvano, mestizo shaman, Nueva Luz de Fatima, April 5
Leslie Taylor, owner, Raintree Nutrition, Inc., Lima, April 27
Rodolfo Valles Vallera, shaman trainee, San Francisco de Yarinacocha, Ap. 11
Other resources:
Ayahuasca-Wasi Transpersonal Shamanism Research Project. www.ayahuasca-wasi.com
The Center for International Environmental Law. www.ciel.org/ptorejection.html
SpiritQuest. www.biopark.org/sprtqu3.html
Trimble, Diane (2000, March 22). Taking Psychedelics Seriously. San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Article copyright Cultural Survival, Inc.

Amazon drilling 'will harm indigenous people'

Reposted from totalcatholic.com

As Peru opens up a large swath of Amazon rain forest to oil and gas drilling, a church official has expressed concern over its consequences on indigenous communities and the environment.

“It’s going to have a tremendous impact on the Amazon and on the cultural life of indigenous communities,” said Adda Chuecas, director of the Amazon Center for Anthropology and Practical Application, an organisation founded in 1974 by the bishops of Peru’s Amazon dioceses to defend the rights of indigenous peoples. “One of the strongest impacts is the destruction of natural resources” on which indigenous communities depend for sustenance.“This will result in greater exclusion of these people,” Chuecas said.

Much of Peru’s Amazon rain forest is believed to lie above oil and gas deposits.More than a dozen companies are already drilling for hydrocarbons, and the Peruvian government is offering 12 new concessions in the Amazon, with bids to open in July.Environmentalists are concerned because some of the concessions overlap protected areas, while indigenous leaders worry about lots that include areas inhabited by nomadic peoples, who live much as their ancestors did and shun contact with the outside world.

Shipibo Youth Fine Arts Center

Above: Nixon Yuimachi painting the Shipibo legend of the chuyachaqui in his Youth Fine Arts Center.

A group of Shipibo youth, led by Nixon Yuimachi, in the indigenous community of San Francisco de Yarinacocha have begun forming a youth group for those interested in learning and teaching about the traditional Shipibo fine arts. The art center has commenced operations in Nixon's home in San Francisco, yet they have a dream of expanding into a new location. They would like to construct an art center with lodging also available for Shipibo youth who have to travel from far away communities to attend week-long art workshops. They could construct this new center and also purchase art supplies in bulk to get the center functioning at their desired capacity for only about $300 USD. The art center will be free to anyone wishing to attend classes (Shipibo, Peruvians, and foreigners alike) and all who staff the center are volunteers. The only expenses are art supplies, although many paints, dyes, and other supplies are available naturally on the art center grounds. They would also like to be able to provide travel scholarships for youth from far away communities who cannot afford to travel to San Francisco de Yarinacocha. They plan to maintain their programs through the sale of their art both locally, nationally, and internationally. They are looking for international connections to people interested in helping to sell their art in international markets.

Above: An intricate painting of a shamanic vision where the shaman connects with Mother Earth in a dream world full of medicinal plants and important Shipibo symbols.

Below: An interpretation of Shipibo life in the past as painted by the art center youth.

Above: A beautifully intricate painting of a Shipibo women elder.

Shipibo art is unique in that most supplies are made from naturally-available resources the Shipibo cultivate or that are gathered wild from the surrounding forests. It is also unique for its cultural designs, an important symbol of Shipibo identity. Many paintings are inspired by Shipibo legends, history, nature, and also from shamanic visions of other worlds. Also, many paintings are done collaboratively with many youth contributing to each painting.

Above: A shamanic vision painted by Nixon Yuimachi and donated to Village Earth in order to raise money for future collaborative projects between the Shipibo people and Village Earth.

If you are interested in purchasing a piece of art or supporting the Youth Fine Arts Center, please contact Village Earth's Peru project coordinator, Kristina Pearson: kristina@villageearth.org or call Village Earth's main office: 1-970-491-5754

Santa Teresita, Ucayali, Peru

The indigenous community of Santa Teresita lies on the shores of Cashibococha, a pristine lake near to Pucallpa. Jaime Flores Diaz invited Village Earth to their community for an afternoon of cultural performances. Jaime began this performance group a few years ago after taking in several orphaned children. He began to teach them traditional Shipibo song and dance. Jaime learned many Shipibo songs from his father who was a traditional healer of his community. Jaime was worried that this knowledge would be lost, so he decided to impart his wisdom onto his adopted children.

Below: Jaime Flores Diaz, a cultural visionary for his people

Jaime is interested to teach more Shipibo youth traditional Shipibo song, dance, and even theater. He is currently looking for funding to construct a cultural center in Santa Teresita that will be open to all Shipibo interested in regaining their knowledge of the traditional performing arts. They will also be available for performances for tourists. Not only will youth be regaining an important cultural aspect in the performing arts, but they are also learning so much more about other aspects of Shipibo culture such as traditional clothing and jewelry design. They are also gaining more confindence in themselves - young people are once again proud to be Shipibo.

This project fits into the larger regional plan for the alternative development of the Shipibo nation. One of the eight key aspects of the Shipibo regional plan is to rescue their culture and bring it back from the brink of extinction to once again be a vibrant, flourishing way of life that distinguishes them from the Western world. Cultural exchange was an important component of each communities' plans - cultural exchange from the elders to the youth and also between Shipibo communities and the tourists who come to visit them.

If you are interested in helping to support Jaime's dream of a Shipibo cultural center in Santa Teresita, please contact Village Earth's Peru project coordinator, Kristina Pearson: kristina@villageearth.org
or call the Village Earth main office: 1-970-491-5754

International development agency commits to indigenous workshops

Posted: March 02, 2007 on Indian Country Today

by: Jerry Reynolds / Indian Country Today
WASHINGTON - Following a noon meeting Feb. 21 in Washington, an institutional structure is in place to monitor the impact of the U.S. Agency for International Development on indigenous peoples.

Armstrong Wiggins, director of the Indian Law Resource Center's Washington office, suggested the agency would benefit from a series of workshops designed to familiarize its employees with indigenous peoples and their issues.

''We would be more than willing even to come and have a workshop with you guys, here in your offices, to tell you what's going on in the indigenous world. A lot of us think that because we're educated, we don't need to know about indigenous peoples. And sometimes we make mistakes and develop discrimination because we don't know, we don't understand. It has to go both ways in visiting with each other. We would be more than willing to come and give you a workshop with your staff to understand what's going on at the U.N. level; what's going on at the OAS [Organization of American States] level; what's going on ... in every country; the legislation issues. ... And I would like to see that thinking of 'indigenous issues, a problem' - how can we overcome it together? That is not the problem. Just like issues of any society - what just that we don't understand, we look at it as a problem.''

Franklin Moore, USAID's interim coordinator for indigenous peoples issues, responded favorably to the basic idea. He said afterward that he must rely on Wiggins and other indigenous people and organizations represented at the meeting, among them Amazon Alliance, First Peoples Worldwide and Native Lands, for suggestions as to the subject matter, agenda and mechanics of such workshops. It's too early to anticipate a schedule for the workshops, he said. ''But it would be useful to us at USAID ... to look at indigenous peoples in the context of our work. ... We will go forward with this.'' USAID is a federal agency that serves U.S. foreign policy goals, primarily through economic development programs in impoverished nations. The projects are subject to the approval of foreign national governments. Many indigenous peoples have praised the efforts undertaken with USAID funding; many others, less heard in the host countries and all but voiceless within the United States, have long derided its impact on their cultures and communities. But in recent years, funding for conservation projects has found non-indigenous, nongovernmental organizations (or NGOs, the international equivalent of American ''nonprofits'') jeopardizing indigenous land tenure with the encouragement of foreign governments. The procedure is well-established enough to have earned a term for itself - ''soft eviction'' - and the protests of indigenous peoples against it have begun to penetrate the halls of Congress.

First Peoples Worldwide founder Rebecca Adamson met with staff for Sen. Patrick Leahy to initiate a process that created a Coordinator for Indigenous Peoples Issues position within USAID. In 2005 Leahy, D-Vt., a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, with the approval of then-chairman Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., moved the following language in a Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2006: ''The [Appropriations] Committee is concerned with the many problems facing indigenous peoples whose survival is increasingly threatened. Poverty, discrimination and displacement are common challenges for indigenous peoples whose unique cultural traditions enrich all humanity. The Committee believes that USAID should devote more attention to helping indigenous peoples protect their lands and their way of life. As a first step, the Committee recommends that USAID designate a Coordinator for Indigenous Peoples Issues to: consult with representatives of indigenous peoples organizations; ensure that the rights and needs of indigenous peoples are effectively addressed in USAID policies, programs and activities; monitor the design and implementation of such programs, programs and activities which directly or indirectly affect them; and coordinate with other Federal agencies on relevant issues relating to indigenous peoples.'' Adamson had her own view of why the appointment took a while.

''None of the 'Beltway bandits' wanted this office to come about and, once it came about, they didn't want it to do anything,'' she said, referring to the large Washington-area organizations that are annually awarded large contracts by federal government agencies, USAID among them. (The roughly circular system of highways around Washington, D.C., is known as the Beltway to anyone within a certain radius of Washington.) But she added that USAID did the right thing in appointing Moore as interim director. Moore himself said the delayed appointment was due to the need for USAID staff to become more familiar with indigenous issues. Indeed, the meeting demonstrated a certain wariness toward a permanent intra-agency indigenous presence on the part of USAID staff. Staff members made repeated precautionary references to the USAID ''mandate,'' creating a cumulative impression of doubt about the Senate ''approps'' language. Midway through the meeting, Peter Poole, a geographer whose career includes years of territorial mapping and court testimony in support of indigenous land claims, suggested that USAID develop guidelines against conservation-as-indigenous-dispossession, instead of waiting for organizations ''that may or may not be villains in these cases'' to raise the pirate flag of soft eviction policies and practices. USAID staff member Connie Campbell responded by pronouncing herself ''actually shocked by some of the language that I'm hearing, everything from outside NGOs to villains, but at the same time encouraging us to encourage them to work in different ways. And so we also should all be cognizant of the rhetoric that we're always using when talking about this in the context of working together.'' Poole kept his own counsel for the rest of the meeting, but pressed for comment afterward he said, ''Oh, I forgot, there are no bad people. I forgot! It's a big American dream: there are no bad people, only mistakes.''

Mac Chapin of Native Lands exposed a ''mistake'' by Chemonics International Inc., a large Washington-based contractor of USAID. Among the lessons learned from a five-year, $9.5 million USAID contract for Chemonics International's expertise on deforestation among the Huaorani and Cofan territories of Ecuador was the following, according to the Chemonics Web site as of Feb. 20: ''Implementing a project with and for the benefit of indigenous peoples is analogous to parenting: there is no reliable 'how to' manual and every community, like every child, is unique.'' Though Chapin read aloud from a Web site printout, no one expressed shock at its language. Several faces at the table registered palpable distaste, however, and in one case, evident distress. Within a week, the wording on the Web site had been changed and Chemonics project director Joao Queiroz had sent Chapin (addressed as Chapman) a defensive and accusatory e-mail. Chapin's response corrected his perspective and the spelling of his, Chapin's, name.