IRI - Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative of the Americas

Every year, more people around the world turn to ancestral plant medicine in search of healing. This growing interest carries with it a responsibility: to expand this wisdom without losing what makes it sacred and safe.
We honor those who carry this knowledge, and the memory of those who protected it before us.
In this way, we highlight the words of Rasu Yawanawá, spiritual leader and medicine man of the Yawanawá people, grandson of the great pajé Tata Txanu Natasheini, speaking at PCU26. He reminds us that today we are the ones responsible for carrying awareness to those who are searching. The expansion of this medicine is already underway, and now, more than ever, we all need to connect with her. But that connection comes with a warning: medicine is not something to be used however we please. It is not to be appropriated, sold as a pharmacy product, or patented as though it were merchandise.
Because just as medicine carries the strength to heal, without the right knowledge and respect to bring her to people responsibly, she can just as easily bring the opposite: harm instead of healing. Rasu’s words are a call to protect the integrity of medicine, so that its expansion into the world never comes at the cost of its truth.