Union of Yagé Healers of the Colombian Amazon, UMIYAC

Jul 26, 2024
5 min read

The following is the Declaration by UMIYAC, the Union of Yagé Healers of the Colombian Amazon about culturation appropiation. There is also the Code of Ethics for the practice of Indigenous healing. Our Siona elders are members of UMIYAC, an iniciative of Taitas from Siona, Inga, Coreguaje, Kamentsá-Biya and Cofán people, all inhabitants of the Colombian Putumayo basin, our ancestral lands. The following documents are the product of meetings, retreats, ceremonias from our elders to reach an agreement on how we want our ancestral medicine is preserved, promoted and how we want to open the dialogue about it with other indigenous peoples and with the national and international community, as we are conscious that the sacred medicines have been the object of western researches, while many non-Indigenous peoples are looking for it. Both situations can be positive in many aspects, but, at the same time, it can open many difficulties such as the lack of recognition of the intellectual property of indigenous peoples, the real and authentic experts of the sacred medicines and the abuse by many charlatans trying to profit from our ancestral knowledge and spirituality. We can see it in this research "Ethical principles of traditional Indigenous medicine to guide western psychedelic research and practice," where it is said:

In 2001, a report supported by the World Health Organization Traditional Medicine Program (WHO TRM) determined that a total of 122 in-use drug compounds were being used in Western medicine at the time, and 80% of these compounds were used for the same (or related) purpose as their original traditional medicine use. Yet, many Indigenous medicine systems around the world are still often given the back seat when it comes to both acknowledgement and practice within the conventional medical-care setting. Free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) is a specific right that pertains to Indigenous Peoples, additionally recognized in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). FPIC has not been historically honored or understood in the context of the application of the rights of Indigenous Peoples within Western medical research and praxis, including within the context of appropriation of traditional medicines.

Then, all those researchers feed the powerful pharmaceutic markets genering billions of dollars to people who never have been in the Amazon forests and who do not mind the situation of poverty, perseccutions, anxiety and lack of opportunities of the ones who are the real knowledgeable of the plants. The West must start to recognize that they are not the only masters of knowledge. That there is a western science, a western technology, a western philosophy... but there are other peoples with other parts of the full true. The western knowledge is only one and if it continues dominating, manipulating and seeing itself as the only possible way to be human, it will kill the Mother Earth and all of us with that.

The first meaningful meeting was in June 1999 of the Taitas of five First Nations of the Putumayo basin. Many persons and groups are interested in Indigenous peoples today, joining our efforts to protect our languages, traditions, medicines, religiosities, identities and territories. We welcome and we are grateful of all those good intentions and, for some people, those are more than intentions. Good people who come into our suffered communities, sharing our lives and worries and knowing our cultures. People from all over the world, from students to scholars, from humble people to those who are in search for their own indigenous roots, especially those who are called in Abbia Yala as mestizo, the ones who must remember their origin in our common ancestors.

At the same time, many others continue the same path of colonialism and neo-colonialism, coming to our territories to look for El Dorado, for what they can get from our forests, destroying our eco-systems, putting in danger our lives and communities, despising our being as the original settlers of this land. We do not wish the worst to nobody. We are hopeful that everybody will get to the point of consciusness. We forgive, but we call on those peoples to change their minds and to mind about the pains of Mother Earth. Now the entire planet is at the edge of a global climate crisis that means more famine, conflicts, violence, poverty and natural disasters and we, Indigenous peoples, are not the responsible of it with our ancient wisdoms, considered by many as something savage, primitive, cosmological, mythical, archaic. The responsible of the crisis is deeply rooted in the western philosophy. We do not despise western science and technology. We know that any knowledge is World Heritage. We also want to participate in the benefits of western science and technology. But you must get conscious that the West will not save the planet alone. It has demonstrated that it is unable to prevent wars, conflicts, famine... right now millions of peoples from empoverished countries - no poor but empoverished - are walking towards what they now called the Global North. Right now thousands of walkers are crossing the sacred forest of El Darien between Colombia and Panama to look for easy routes to the United States of America, because they cannot live in their own ancestral territories, because they are feel of poverty, lack of opportunities, famine, conflicts, persecutions... Where is the modern West with all that proud technology, able to detect exoplanets millions of light years deep into the ocean of the cosmos, able to send expensive robots to run the dead deserts of Mars, creating deadly weapons to kill peoples who look different, but unable to stop poverty and climate change?

We think the West needs healing. We, Indigenous peoples, are not the saviors and we do not behave like that. We only want to preseve what our ancestors let to us and now, we know, we need to share it with all humanity. But all humanity must be humble enough to share, to discover the ancient roots that is not a sort of return to a romantict past, but wisdom is timeless and it help us to build a new era, where wars and hunger will become forgotten things.

Our sacred medicines can help to heal the world. But we do it with care and respect in a double compromise: You, who are searching for the wisdom of sacred medicines and Indigenous rituals for the purpose to study it for science or for your own Vision Search, must aproach it with RESPECT, giving honour to the elders. And we, as Indigenous peoples, who are involved as healers, men and women of knowledge, spiritual guides, seers, must do it with RESPECT, giving honours to those who are searching for wisdom, from wherever they come.

For this reason, we share these two documents. Thanks to those who made it possible. Thanks to UMIYAC, to the elders, to the ancestors, to the Indigenous reservations and councils. We hope that we can celebrate more meetings, to update terms and to include other indigenous peoples from Colombia, South America, Abbia Yala and the world.