The Curandera from North Dakota

In South and Central America, Curanderos are the medicine men and shamans of their culture. Likewise a Curandera is a female medicine woman, which there are few of compared to the number of men.
Lately I really felt guided to find a medicine woman to do ceremony with, which is part of why I went to Peru for the conference. I knew that several women would speak and that I would be in the company of some of the leading experts on ayahuasca and shamanism, who could at least lead me in the right direction.
I had all these grandiose ideas about the Curanadera that I would meet. That she would be indigenous, having traveled from her home in the far off jungle somewhere and needing an interpreter to translate her complex ancient language to us.
Who I found was Wendy. Wendy is a humble Curandera who really prefers not to have a title at all. She would just rather be a friend and not someone to be revered. She wears tye dyes and speaks only a little Spanish. But, she has trained with shamans from all over Peru for many years, including Don Augustine Rivas.
My first ceremony with Wendy was beautiful. It was for women only and we worked with a beautiful medicine. It is an integrative plant, meaning it teaches you how to connect with nature and with spirit. It was a day ceremony at the zoo. We started off sitting under a little maloca (palm hut) on a lake for a couple of hours, reciting our intentions for learning from the medicine that day and waiting for it to take effect. Wendy got a reading off of each of us for where our original bloodlines were from. Mine, would’nt you know, is of Elven decent, meaning of the Fairies.
When we were ready we ventured into the zoo, first visiting with a gorgeous water boa (see picture). At one point we ended up at a Jaguar cage where I witnessed something I had never seen before. Wendy stood looking at the animal for awhile and then the cat actually came over to the cage, stood on its hind legs and leaned up against the bars, staring at her and purring. He obviously felt a connection, without any threat or he would never have bared his belly. It was incredible.
We all got so excited, taking pictures and talking that is distracted him and he sat down again. Then the other women walked on and Wendy explained to me what had happened. She said that she had gone into a space of just feeling the cat, sort of shifting her energy to be on his level. She did not ask him to do what he did. She just opened up to who he was and he felt her connection and returned her honoring of him with that gesture, showing his honor of her as well. It is really hard to explain. She had me do an exercise to understand it myself. I truly felt the tree I was leaning against. I felt its connection to everything around it and to me, its acceptance of everything exactly as it is. And I felt like I was the tree. It was the most amazing lesson in connecting with nature that I have learned yet. It happened again later when these monkeys sat staring at me for several minutes.
That was proof enough that I had found the woman I had looked for, a Curandera from North Dakota who is as brilliant as any other shaman, if not more so. I am honored to learn from Wendy and I feel a wonderful friendship is developing with this amazing sister of mine.
huachuma

Peyote Ceremony……In the Mall!

In Mexico one of my main hopes was to be a part of an indigenous ceremony with one of the sacred plant teachers. But even with my contacts through the yaje community I could not make it happen. It’s just not that easy. Understandably, they are not that open to allowing just anyone into their sacred ceremonies, especially westerners.
Instead I found an article online that told of a Huichol tribe that would be performing a Peyote ceremony at the local mall. At first I thought this was just too weird and how could any true shaman want a part of this but as I read on it made perfect sense.
They had come down from the mountains, where many of them had always lived and never ventured from, to big city Puerto Vallarta, to educate the public about how important the sacred plant medicine, Peyote, is to their culture. They had risked so much in leaving their home. They were unfamiliar with our ways and laws and while they were there, their head shaman got arrested for swimming in the river. They were selling their art to help pay for his release and to pay for the cost of bringing the tribe there.
The Huichols use peyote as medicine for healing and connecting with spirit. It has been used by them in a sacred way for eons and they are legally the only ones allowed to possess the plant. They are truly brilliant artisans and much of their artwork is designed from the elaborate visions they receive from working with peyote.
Ever since peyote was discovered by outsiders, as a psychotropic plant, it has been harvested in mass, from the land in Mexico for recreational use and has become much harder for the Huichols to obtain. And with so much land ownership, it is very hard for them to even get to the land that it grows on due to property lines and fences that exist today.
So I went to the mall to learn more about these beautiful people and their sacred traditions and also to see how a peyote ceremony in the mall would play out. It was very fascinating. I fell in love with the art and jewelry and bought a ton of it from them.
The whole tribe was there and they sang and danced the traditional songs around the medicine men as their head shaman prayed to the medicine and then cut up and ate the peyote. I could’nt believe I was watching this, right by a McDonald’s, but it was clear to me that this really was not a show but for our education.
I believe that even more than for our education, they were there for the healing of us. Bringing their work through the peyote medicine to give us the healing that we need to be able to respect and connect with nature, spirit, peyote and all of the sacred plant teachers again in a way that we have forgotten.
Photo description: My cousin snapped one picture of the head shaman holding a baby and from the look in his eyes the medicine was at work.