The others of the party: a flight over Yawanawa and Huni Kuin festivals

Abstract

This article reflects on some of the relationships of the Yawanawa and the Huni peoples, who speak Pano language and are residents of the State of Acre, Brazil, with the nawa (“white people”), especially those who participate in ayahuasca religions and neo-shamanic movements. Currently, a number of Yawanawa and Huni Kuen indigenous settlements have been promoting festivals as a way of presenting cultures. They enthusiastically receive the nawa (“people”, “other people”, “foreigners”) to party and feel the strength of the forest. We will analyze how certain ways of expression emerge from these encounters and what they are capable of producing in terms of new arrangements. We will consider the centrality of the parties and ayahuasca in processes of invention of culture, evidencing translations of diverse worlds, through multidirectional flows of understandings, categories, festive and shamanic practices which take place at these encounters. We will observe ways of uses and transformations of the tea, here denominated ayahuasca, daime, uni or nixi pae, from the diversity of relations that indigenous Yawanawa and Huni Kuen establish with ayahuasca religions, especially with Santo Daime.

Keywords:
party; (neo) shamanism; Pano; Santo Daime