The Beliefs of the Elders

CODE OF ETHICS FOR INDIGENOUS MEDICINE OF THE COLOMBIAN AMAZON

Introduction

In June 1999, in Yurayaco, Caquetá in the Colombian Amazon, the heart of the territory of the Ingano people, we, their indigenous healers and traditional doctors, met in a Gathering of Shamans.Among our own peoples - the Ingano, the Kofán, the Siona, the Kamsá, the Coreguaje, the Tatuyo, and the Carijona - we are known as Taitas, Sinchis, Curacas, or Payés.

After 500 years of conquest, pillage, and death inflicted on our communities and cultures, we, the Taitas of the yagé culture in Colombia, have at long last been able to meet, exchange our knowledge, establish friendships, and unite to establish a common cause, with a single goal in mind.

We consider yagé, along with our other medicinal plants and our wisdom and knowledge, to be a gift from God and a great benefit for the health of humanity. We have a duty to demonstrate to the world, with determination and solemnity, the importance of our values.

At the conclusion of the Gathering, we committed ourselves to working for the unity and defense of our traditional medicine and to offering our services for the health of indigenous peoples and humanity.  The Taitas present at the Gathering will form the Union of Traditional Yagé Healers of the Colombian Amazon (UMIYAC) and name leaders who will undertake our appointed tasks and represent us before the world at large, before governments and institutions.

The most direct way to preserve both our healing practices and the Taitas' identity is first, to define who may work legitimately as an authentic traditional healer; and second, to determine when and under what conditions an apprentice may begin the learning process, and when he may be authorized to perform a healing.

Thus, to establish our legitimacy, the Union of Traditional Healers will conceive and institute a certification procedure for traditional healers, apprentices, and disciples. This undertaking will make it possible to distinguish between traditional healers and charlatans.  From the start, all apprentices will know what expectations their teachers have set for them: dietary strictures, abstinence, use of plants, moderation in liquor, and the rules of dignified behavior in general for a disciple and apprentice of the wisdom of indigenous healing.

As Taitas or Shamans, we know that all of us have unique ways of working.  Each of us has received a different vision from his teacher and knows different ways to make remedies or to take yagé.  The simple fact that a Union has been formed does not mean that everyone will work in the same way.  But there is agreement on the importance of setting some basic rules of discipline, behavior, seriousness, and mutual respect for our communities, for ourselves, and for those who seek us out as healers.  This is the basis for our proposed draft of a Code of Medical Ethics, although we prefer to call this simply "The Beliefs of the Elders."

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