Spirit of the Shuar: Wisdom from the Last Unconquered People of the Amazon

Deep within the mountainous rainforest of Ecuador, many days walk from the nearest road, lives a tribe that call themselves Shuar ("the people"). Their homeland is a place of wondrous beauty and yet great danger, where anaconda lurk in the rivers and jaguar prowl at night. Spirit of the Shuar is a book that tells their story, in their own words. After you have read it, you will know why Spirit of the Shuar has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.The Shuar are proud people who are perhaps the only tribe remaining in all of the Americas who have never surrendered to any would-be conquerors. Until recently, the Shuar lived in a shroud of secrecy, fiercely protecting their lands and privacy. Twenty years ago it would have been unimaginable that Shuar warriors, women, elders, and uwishin ("the ones who know") would willingly and openly share their traditions, mysteries, and life stories with outsiders. But these are new and challenging times for the Shuar. They are struggling to retain their traditions as well as their right to survive in the face of the insatiable hunger of oil companies and lumber conglomerates for their lands. And missionaries who seek to save their souls and rescue them from ways deemed uncivilized. Too many outsiders have in recent years come to them with the intent to teach and reform, but not to learn. And, as you will learn from reading Spirit of the Shuar, the Shuar have much wisdom to convey.In this spirit Mariano Chumpi, a Shuar warrior and co-author of Spirit of the Shuar, agreed to record on cassette tape the stories and wisdom, the feelings and impressions, of his people. The resulting transcripts were put in book form by Mariano's long-time friend, John Perkins. This collaboration resulted in a masterpiece! Spirit of the Shuar combines the colorful spoken language of a peoples reliant upon oral tradition with the skilled written craftsmanship of author John Perkins who first became acquainted with the Shuar as a Peace Corps volunteer over 30 years ago. It is a sensitive and revealing portrayal of the traditions, way of life, and spiritual practices of a people who proudly stand against the pressures of modernism. The tales contained within Spirit of the Shuar are told in a direct and elegantly simple style. The pages come alive as the reader is given a glimpse into what it might feel like to live among the Shuar. Warriors share their experiences of participating in head-hunting wars. Shamans speak of all-night healing ceremonies during which both the uwishin and his patient typically consume a powerful medicine plant, ayahuasca. Later, the uwishin blows tsentsak, invisible darts, into the heart of his patient to aid him in seeing where the problem originates and how it must be healed. Women discuss how they prepare chicha, a fermented manioc beverage which serves as a primary food for the Shuar, which men are only permitted to touch with their lips. Intimacies about family living, courtship and sex

The Shuar tell their stories through the magical pages of this powerful book. It is an epic, beautifully written, with wonderful color photographs. Yes, the Shuar share with us their unconventional approaches to sex and ecstatic love-making, their amazing initiations into adulthood and psychotropic plants, their vision quests, shamans, battles with enemy tribes and the Peruvian army, their traditions of shrinking the heads of slain enemies and their mythological reasons for going to war. Yet, what really comes through is their wisdom. They are true masters of a timeless, ancient wisdom. It is exactly what we who are so absorbed and haunted by modern greed and all the damage it causes need right now. Today. John Perkins has brought us another inspiring adventure into worlds that go into and also far beyond physical reality! What more can I say? You must read it for yourself!

"Spirit of the Shuar" is a modern epic of the highest standards, brilliantly told by the Shuar themselves, poetically translated by John Perkins -- with his own beautiful story of how he came to know and love them and of the partnerships created with people around the world who want to learn the wisdom of the Shuar. I was amazed to discover that these headhunters who had fascinated me since my youth have developed such sophisticated philosophies which they express so eloquently. I was intrigued by their love lives, initiations, psychotropic plants, and shamans, but most of all by the messages of compassion, balance, and peace they are carrying to the world outside their rainforests.