PLANTS AND MEDICINES
This part of the website is dedicated to the special link that Awajún (and other indigenous Peruvians) have with the nature, in particular with medicine plants. Since ancient time, the human-nature relationship is one of the most important aspect of Awajún culture, in which they find solution to many problems, including disease and epidemics.
Peru is a country where the majority of population works within the informal sector, which means they are forced to go to work, even if there is a global pandemic, so they cannot avoid crowded places, where the risk of Covid-19 is higher. Moreover, the Nation is not able to provide aid for everyone, which worsen the already precarious situation.
For this reason, the Awajún decided to use the ancestral knowledge of plant-based medicine in order to protect themselves. As we have introduced in the section regarding the health situation, indigenous populations are using this particular aspect of their culture as the only alternative for the lack of national aid.
In this page we will focus on how this particular part of the Awajún culture was used in order to fight the negative impact of Covid-19 on them. The main sources of information are kindly suggested by Silvia Romio (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Romio_Silvia), that is:
- Micheal F. Brown, “una paz incierta”, 1983;
- Anne Christine Taylor, “l’art d’inflischir les âmes”, 2017;
- Facebook blogs in which indigenous Peruvians try to help each other;
Now we are going to analyse each one:
1) The first book is written by the president of the SAR (School of Advanced Researches) of Santa Fe (Arizona), who is also an expert of Native American culture and a former professor of anthropology and sociology in Oakley, Maine. (https://sites.williams.edu/mbrown/bio/) This book explains in details the culture and the living conditions of many indigenous Peruvians, including the Awajún. Even if it was written in 1983, it describes the connection of people with nature so, it’s still valid.
2) The second article focuses on a report of “magic song” tradition common to many indigenous groups, including the Awajún, which not only it's an important tradition, but it includes the relationship between mankind and nature as well. These songs are a ritual context in which people spread positive feelings for those who are listening the magical song. They are used in order to declare themselves to the loved one, but also for other purposes, like singing for healing an ill person.
3) In the Facebook pages, we can see interviews from different “sabios” who explain one of the most important aspects of their culture: the connection between mankind and nature, which is part of the “buen vivir”. The most important message is to respect nature, because if we don’t, we’ll pay the consequences as humanity. Humankind is part of nature and damaging part of it means damaging ourselves. One of the videos we strongly recommend to deepen the knowledge of plant-based medicine in Awajún culture is the following one: https://www.facebook.com/BanrepculturalLeticia/videos/698720717443622/
In conclusion, we can say that, despite all the difficult moments they are forced into, the Awajún and other indigenous people are able to fight back the negative effects of Covid-19. Of course, they still need help in order to pass through this terrible pandemic.
Bosque de las Nuwas
Nuwas in the Awajún language means women. It is a project developed in the forest that intends to recover the traditional native knowledge of this population, and it is carried out principally by women. The forest welcomes Peruvian people but even by foreigners, that could visit the area, learn about Awajún culture and the use of medical plants, sleep in a dairy farm, built by women. The last aim is to recover some species of plants that are disappearing because of deforestation, but also to start a business in the market by selling their products. This year, Nuwas, created two infusion under their own brand, with the plant they cultivate in the forest.
They were at the final step of the project, when, due to COVID19, they were obliged to suspend it.
Now the project is paralyzed. There is no possibility to welcome tourists or to sell them Awajún products. For this reason was launched a campaign called SOSNuwas, in order to compensate the economic losses. What is more difficult is instead to fill the contribution to humanity that the “bosque” offers; as Arlita Antuash Paati, one of the seventy women of the group affirms: “Nosotras podemos poner nuestro granito de arena y sanar con nuestras plantas. No es solo un beneficio nuestro, sino para todo el mundo (Mongabay, 2020)
“Al menos 23 millones de mujeres y niñas indígenas en América Latina y el Caribe, serán el grupo poblacional más afectado con el aumento de la pobreza y pobreza extrema que ha pronosticado el Banco Mundial y la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (Cepal) a consecuencia de la pandemia del Covid-19” (María Noel Vaeza, ONU Mujeres, regional director.)
Indigenous women are the most affected, within the indigenous communities, by COVID19 and the financial crisis that follows it.
This crisis harshly illustrates the yet deep gender inequality that has ever impacted on the women's situation, on their access to education, to the labor market, to healthcare and so on.
The “Foro Internacional de Mujeres Indígenas'' lists the main problems that indigenous women have to face.
- Limited access to healthcare:
- Lost of spirituality, culture and intergenerational knowledge transmission
- Overwork on women’s tasks as family care: quarantine and limitations to mobility means for a lot of indigenous men the impossibility to come back to their community. This impacts the amount of work of women concerning family care but even the community care.
- Lack of food and effects on productive systems, marketing and employment
- Increasing of violence and racism towards indigenous women during quarantine: the increase of psychological stress due to quarantine increases the domestic violence against indigenous youth girls and women. Moreover the reporting systems are inactive in some countries, increasing the vulnerability of women that experience domestic violence.
- Effects on youth
- Effects due to the closure of schools and the limited technology available
- Effects on mental health
- Difficulties to travel and to reach communities
The indigenous woman have demonstrated to be resilient towards the challenges proposed by the pandemic and adopted different solutions to fight it. Principally:
- Some organizations as “Mujeres Indígena'' supply population with food during the quarantine period to face the food emergency and made campaign to share knowledge about aliments explaining which one strength the immune system, and the nutritional value of fruit and plants. Moreover they trained people about how to plant edible forest products, to improve the quality of the soil, to use plant protector agents, to make storage. Even traditional forms of cultivation are recovering.
- Focus on eradication of violence during the pandemic crisis. To do so the “Mujeres Indígenas” record the cases of violence using new technology and the net . Moreover they visited the houses where these cases of violence took place and established a support net for these families.
Bosque de las Nuwas. Foto: Marlon del Águila / Conservación Internacional.
Morgana Vargas Llosa, 201
https://www.coolearth.org/2015/10/empowering-women-and-saving-rainforest-in-the-awajun/