Sustaining Matses Indigenous Medicine - Phase II

Dear Friends and Supporters,

With 2015 drawn to a close and a new year ahead of us, we wanted to take a moment to thank our supporters and update you on the progress of our on-the-ground conservation initiatives in the Amazon Rainforest partnership with the Matsés indigenous people. 

We are excited to share with you achievements of our ongoing projects as well as announcing the launch of a major new project, the Matsés Indigenous Mapping Initiative!

Before the start of Acaté’s initiative, none of the remaining Matsés elder healers, including Cesar pictured above, had apprentices due to the influences of missionaries. The accumulated knowledge and ancestral wisdom passed on through the centuries was perilously close to being irretrievably lost.

In May 2015, Acaté leadership and Matsés elders met for several days in the Matsés village of Puerto Allegre on the upper Rio Yaquerana to finalize the Matsés Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia, culminating over two years of diligent work.

The completion of the first-ever indigenous medicine encyclopedia, a 500-page repository written entirely by elder shamans in their own words and language, received wide acclaim in the conservation world.

Neste Tantiaquidon Chuibanaid, the Matsés Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia, is an extraordinary repository of ancestral knowledge. Densely written and beautifully illustrated, this historical record is the first of its kind and captured uncounted centuries of accumulated indigenous wisdom and healing knowledge. Until their encyclopedia and the start of the project, the Matsés entire traditional health system was on the unchecked verge of disappearance due to influences of the outside world. 

Two elder Matsés shamans review over drafts of the Matsés Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia

In June, leading rainforest conservation news site, Mongabay.com, profiled the initiative with an interview with Acaté President Christopher Herndon by correspondent Jeremy Hance. The resulting article became Mongabay’s most read and shared story of 2015. Translated in several languages including Spanish and Portuguese, the story was additionally covered in a number of international media outlets including Fusion, Veoverde, Motherboard Vice, Entrepreneur, Peru This Week, La Republica among others!

Although the giant monkey tree frog was first described by European naturalists in the 18th century, its chemical properties were unknown until the Matsés were first contacted and observed to use in hunting rituals.

The Encyclopedia, its planning, writing, typing, editing, all photographs and illustrations, was undertaken entirely by the Matsés in their own villages. The Acaté team on the ground in Perú carefully oversaw its printing to ensure the security of sensitive information contained within that belongs to the Matsés people. Biopiracy is of real concern for the Matsés as they have had their knowledge stolen by outsiders in the past. The skin secretions of the giant monkey frog (Phyllomedusa bicolor) are used in hunting rituals by the Matsés. After reports of the Matsés use of it emerged from the forest, investigations of the frog’s secretions in the laboratory revealed a complex cocktail of peptides with potent vasoactive, narcotic, and antimicrobial properties. Over 70 patents to date have been filed by universities and pharmaceutical companies for applications on peptides derived from the frog’s secretions, without recognition of indigenous peoples for which it has long held a unique and important role in their culture.

In November 2015, all copies of the finished Encyclopedia were transferred over to the custody of the Matsés leadership represented by High Chief Daniel Vela Collantes and Advisory Board Member Segundo Shabac Reyna Perez. Acaté Perú Director, Bill Park, and Carla Noain, represented Acaté during the handoff. It was an emotional exchange, years in the making, and a powerful moment to realize the culmination of such a heartfelt endeavor.

Matsés healer Antonio Jimenez holds a seedling of a medicinal tree he is preparing to transplant into the rainforests surrounding his home. It is rarely appreciated that indigenous peoples are often master horticulturalists.

There was agreement among the Matsés elders that the completion of the Encyclopedia is a historical and critical first step towards mitigating existential threats to Matsés healing wisdom and self-sufficiency in health. The Encyclopedia alone is not sufficient, however, to maintain their self-sufficiency as indigenous healing systems, like all healing systems, are based on experience that can only be transmitted through long apprenticeships, as it was when the elders learned from their fathers before them. At the inter-village meeting in May 2015, the Matsés leaders and elders outlined their vision for Phase II, the Apprentices Program, in which each elder shaman—most of whom are also Encyclopedia chapter authors—will be accompanied in the forest by younger Matsés to learn the plants and assist in treating patients.

The groundwork for the Apprentices program has already been established in five villages through the writing of the Encyclopedia chapters where a Matsés young adult was paired to an elder shaman in each of the communities. The full apprenticeship pilot was initiated in 2014 in the village of Estirón under the supervision of master healer Luis Dunu Chiaid. Due to the success of the pilot, it was unanimously agreed by the Matsés that this program should be expanded to as many villages as possible, with priority given to villages that no longer have traditional healers. 

Phase II also involves creation of Healing Forest Medicinal Plant Gardens, based on traditional Matsés agroforestry. Many of the rainforest vines and fungi that the Matsés use for healing will not grow in sun-exposed gardens and require rainforest ecosystems for their propagation. Successfully transplanting and establishing rainforest plants in situ is not easy and requires a master understanding of these complex ecosystems for successful cultivation. Western agroforestry and science could learn much from these indigenous masters.