Sacred Reciprocity In Action
For all that has been received (learning, guidance, support) in the process of developing The Way Back Home, ten percent of all monetary funds received will go to one of the biocultural conservation organisations listed below*
*If you have one that is not listed that you would like your contribution to go to, please let me know
"Ayni" is a Quechua word from the Peruvian Andes that means "today for you, tomorrow for me." It is a concept that implies the mutuality in all relationships, including humanity's relationship with Mother Earth. It refers to the idea that there is no giving without receiving and there is no receiving without giving. Acting like a thread that holds the fabric of Andean existence together, Ayni points to the interconnectedness of all things, including the exchange of energy between humans, nature, and the universe.
Though this term comes from the Quechua people, the principle of reciprocity is not unique to them. Reciprocity is at the foundational core of many nature-based, indigenous cultures. Respectfully asking permission, showing gratitude and care, and giving and gifting back in return are basic principles that span numerous ancestral cultures, including those which plant medicine practices and traditions originate from.
As we engage with and learn from these cultures and their healing practices and plants, we are gifted the responsibility to also learn about and take on this way of living in reciprocity. If/when we enter into relationship with these different teachers and plant medicines, the invitation is to explore ways in which we can give back for all that we receive and be in relationship with these teachers in a good way.
The ways to give back are many, but the call for us to stand in alliance with and support of indigenous communities is urgent and at the very core. Indigenous communities continue to face violence, persecution, and economic marginalisation, and their languages (and along with it their cultures) are being lost and their land taken away.
Below are some resources to support your personal exploration with reciprocity.
Mamma Senchina (and family)
El Mamo is a wise elder of the Kogi community from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, a place regarded by many as the heart of the world. He comes from a lineage that safeguards the word of advice that has been held in coca and tobacco for many generations. After a near-death experience in which he was one of the few survivors of a lightning strike on a ceremonial house in the Sierra, he began a journey through different territories to make payments in hills and lagoons, endorsing agreements of origins with other communities.
Mamma Senchina has been an undeniably potent influence on my journey and, I am sure, on those of the others he has encountered. Everywhere he goes, he spreads the pure, sacred, straightforward teachings through his words and songs and dance. Funds sent to El Mamo and his family would provide for wood, food, and other resources for living while doing this work.
Learn more here.
Alianza Ceibo
The Ceibo Alliance is an Indigenous-led Ecuadorian nonprofit organization comprised of members of the Kofan, Siona, Secoya and Waorani peoples, who, in partnership with Amazon Frontlines, is creating a model of Indigenous resistance and international solidarity rooted in the defense of Indigenous territory, cultural survival, and the building of viable solutions-based alternatives to rainforest destruction.
Ceibo is the first alliance of its kind in the region. Formed by members of the very communities it serves, the Ceibo Alliance is in an ideal position to address their needs through projects designed, developed and managed by the Indigenous communities themselves.
Amazon Conservation Team
The Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) is a non-profit organization that works in partnership with indigenous people of tropical South America in conserving the biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest, as well as the culture and land of its indigenous people. ACT was formed in 1996 by ethnobotanist, Dr. Mark Plotkin, and Costa Rican conservationist, Liliana Madrigal. The organization is primarily active in the northwest, northeast, and southern regions of the Amazon.
ACT promotes indigenous rights to land tenure and management, as well as self-determination in governance and tradition for local communities of Amazonia. Since their founding, the organization has worked with over 50 indigenous groups. In their work, ACT pioneered a 'biocultural conservation model' which necessitates direct collaboration and consent with forest-dwelling communities. In addition to safeguarding the Amazon rainforest and protecting the biodiversity of the region, ACT works to protect indigenous medicinal traditions and related intellectual property rights of communities in South America.
Learn more here.
Amazon Frontlines
Amazon Frontlines' mission is to support the struggles of indigenous peoples to defend their rights to land, life and cultural survival in the Amazon Rainforest. They work with the Kofan, Secoya, Siona, and Waorani peoples of the Amazon.
Their efforts and resources go towards:
building solutions for clean water and renewable energy,
supporting the revival and transfer of culture down generations,
protecting more than 5 million acres of indigenous rainforest homelands, and
supporting indigenous youth to tell their own stories in their own voices, keeping indigenous memories alive
Learn more here.
The Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative
The Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative is building a shared vision among indigenous peoples, NGOs, the philanthropic community, social entrepreneurs and governments towards establishing a bi-national protected region – off-limits to industrial scale resource extraction, and governed in accordance with traditional indigenous principles of cooperation and harmony that foster a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship.
The Initiative is led by Amazonian indigenous federations CONFENIAE (Ecuador), AIDESEP (Peru), ORPIO, and COICA, in partnership with Pachamama Alliance, Amazon Watch, Fundación Pachamama, and Stand.earth.
During this early stage of the Initiative, their priorities include:
Resisting expansion of extractive industries including oil and mining and related infrastructure in the region
Strong regional alliance of key stakeholders—indigenous peoples, governments, civil society—aligned around a shared vision for the protection of the Sacred Headwaters region
Completing a regional ecological economic plan for the Sacred Headwaters that is grounded in the principles of ecological stewardship and community well-being
Developing conservation funding solutions that advance protections for the living forests and halt expansion of large-scale extractive industries
Learn more here.
UMIYAC
UMIYAC (Union de Medicos Indigenas Yageceros de la Amazonia Colombia) is an organization created in 1999 and includes five indigenous groups from the Colombian Amazon rainforest: Cofan, Inga, Siona, Koreguaje, and Kamsa Biya.
UMIYAC works to preserve the Amazon rainforest and to revitalize and protect their cultures and their ancestral medicine. The organization is made up of spiritual authorities, medicine men and women of knowledge, and their role is to ensure the health of the territories and the physical and spiritual wellbeing of their communities and territories.
Resources are applied to defending their territories and protecting the Amazon rainforest, strengthening ancestral medicine, promoting indigenous autonomy and self-government, and cultural patrimony.
Survival International
Survival International is a human rights organisation formed in 1969 that campaigns for the rights of indigenous and/or tribal peoples and uncontacted peoples.
The organisation's campaigns generally focus on tribal peoples' desires to keep their ancestral lands. Survival International calls these peoples "some of the most vulnerable on earth", and aims to eradicate what it calls "misconceptions" used to justify violations of human rights. It also aims to publicize the perceived risks that tribes face from the actions of corporations and governments. Survival International states that it aims to help foster tribal people's self-determination.
“We fight for tribal peoples’ survival. We stop loggers, miners, and oil companies from destroying tribal lands, lives and livelihoods across the globe. We lobby governments to recognise indigenous land rights. We document and expose the atrocities committed against tribal people and take direct action to stop them. We give tribal peoples a platform to speak to the world. We are here to amplify the tribal voice and make sure it is heard”
Learn more here.
IPCI - Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative
Empowering Indigenous communities to reconnect with, regenerate, and conserve their sacred Peyote medicine
The IPCI conservation effort exists to sustain the spiritual practices of Indigenous Peoples for generations to come; promoting health, well-being, and native cultural revitalization through sovereignty and sustainability of the Sacred Peyote plant and the lands on which it grows.
IPCI's core strategy for addressing the peyote crisis in Texas and Mexico is creating land access for ecological harvest (promoting regrowth), re-establishment of plant populations (replanting), and a system of conservation management and distribution (assessments, rancher incentives, & policy), fundamentally tied to indigenous sovereignty.
Their overall strategy covers the conservation of traditional knowledge, spiritual and ecological harvest, seed return, pilgrimage, and mexico.
Learn more here.
Some words on reciprocity:
"In both Sibundoy, Colombia and Huautla, Mexico, the Kamentsá and the Mazatec are living examples of communities facing very real challenges. These communities are some of the original stewards of psychedelic medicinal plants and fungi, and yet they have benefited very little from the current expansion of interest in psychedelic medicines throughout North America and Europe. While millions and millions of dollars are poured into research and commercialisation, the communities where these sacraments originate are severely threatened in multiple ways. Traditional culture and language are being lost, traditional land is being encroached upon by development interests, abject poverty is rampant, and their governments do not offer sufficient support nor adequate resources."
- Article by Chacruna
Gratitude is so much more than a polite thank you. It is the thread that connects us in a deep relationship, simultaneously physical and spiritual, as our bodies are fed and spirits nourished by the sense of belonging, which is the most vital of foods…
If our first response is gratitude, then our second is reciprocity: to give a gift in return. What could I give these plants in return for their generosity? It could be a direct response, like weeding or water or a song of thanks that sends appreciation out on the wind. Or indirect, like donating to my local land trust so that more habitat for the gift givers will be saved, or making art that invites others into the web of reciprocity.
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Botanist | The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance
"When, for instance, you meet a plant and you wish to take some of its body for medicine, you ask it if you might, and you explain what it’s for, and you give it something back. On this continent it often has been tobacco, traditionally the most sacred plant of the Americas, that is offered in exchange. I’ve thought about what is most valuable to people of our contemporary culture, and I think it’s time. Time is the thing that is most expensive to us, what we have the least of, and what we’re the most jealous with. Time is the precious gift that we can offer to a plant if we want to get to know it, when we want to ask something from it. The way we can offer it time is to get to know the plant, sit with it, learn what it looks like, and maybe grow it. Even if you’re just purchasing the dried root, try to learn about that plant’s world."
- Kathleen Harrison, Ethnobotanist | Green Medicine and Plant Spirit
"Indigenous cultures constitute 5% of the world population and guard 80% of the planet's diversity. Our culture has destroyed over 50% of tropical rainforests, decrease big fish stock by 90%, and has witnessed the number of world vertebrates drop by 50%.
'So my question when I see these numbers is: What do they know that we don't? What do they understand that we don't? As I was learning about plants from them, the first thing they said to me was, ‘When you pick up the plant you need to ask for permission and ask how much you are allowed to take. And when you receive it, say 'thank you.'' And it seems to me that our culture forgot that, that very basic thing: 'please' and 'thank you'.
We need to understand that without the knowledge that the indigenous people hold, the plant is just a plant. So if you destroy the Amazon, we are destroying the knowledge and the culture that actually knows how to use the plant. And it’s funny, after people drink ayahuasca they say, ‘Oh, I’m so grateful for what I’ve received.’ Then why are we still reporting about the destruction of the Amazon and of the culture of the Amazon?
Speaking about ayahuasca tourism, it could have actually a very positive role if it is done responsibly - responsible to indigenous people, to plants, to visitors. It could have a really important role in communicating what is going on in the Amazon and why this temple where ayahuasca grows is disappearing along with this culture that really knows how to use it.
How the ayahuasca community can foster reciprocity is first by changing themselves: move from ME - my profit, my interest, my healing, my benefits I get from it, to US - How is my healing doing good to the community? What good is it doing to the Amazon, to the people that hold that knowledge? Also, how can we empower indigenous people, give them fundraising, give them visibility. Above all, change your own lifestyle. Because with this you can do the most you can do to preserve the Amazon and to preserve ayahuasca as well.’”
- Erika Oblak, Ecologist | Global Ayahuasca Conference 2019 talk on: Reciprocity and the Impacts of Ayahuasca Tourism