The Shipibo-Konibo are an Indigenous nation of the Ucayali region of Peru. Among them, ayahuasca is called ayawaska or oni, and visionary healers are called onanyabo (the plural form). Writing from 15 years of fieldwork, Favaron, Williams and Bédard argue that Shipibo use of the brew cannot be understood apart from its linguistic, cosmological and spiritual framework, and warn against reducing it to Western psychology (Favaron, Williams and Bédard, 2026).
Song is central. Shipibo healers use medicine songs called icaros, and in the anthropologist Bernd Brabec de Mori’s account of healers in their own communities in the early 2000s, songs were the main means of healing and patients did not drink the brew. He also writes that the word “ceremony” appeared in the 1990s, for sessions involving visitors (Brabec de Mori, 2021).
Shipibo practice has also adapted to visitors. A 2021 study followed a healing program for Western participants run by five Shipibo healers with two Western facilitators, rooted in Shipibo medicine but adapted for outsiders (Gonzalez et al., 2021). Shipibo-Konibo artists are also known for kené, traditional geometric designs, which artists such as Olinda Silvano bring to murals (Dino, 2019).
Sources
- Favaron, Williams and Bédard, 2026, Journal of Psychedelic Studies: ayawaska among the Shipibo-Konibo
- Brabec de Mori, 2021, Frontiers in Psychology: social attribution and ayahuasca healing
- Gonzalez et al., 2021, Frontiers in Pharmacology: Shipibo ceremonial use of ayahuasca
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