 Hi. Good evening. My name is Carlo Brescia. I'm from Peru and I'm going to make this presentation about a glam photographic journey into the world of sacred plants from the Peruvian Amazon region. Next slide please. So this is the structure of this presentation. I will discuss, present some background of what is indigenous knowledge, epistemic decolonization, and this glam project we began last year. So the next slide is, in the picture you see a Shakapa, which is a written instrument. So there are many definitions of indigenous knowledge. The one I am presenting here right now is one from UNESCO. There are many ways to define indigenous knowledge, but it's a way of understanding the world, knowledge. It is important also to define who defines what is indigenous knowledge. It is done from an inside perspective or from an outside perspective. This is very important when we are in this colonialism and decolonization, we understand by knowledge. Now I am presenting what we usually understand by colonization, the action or process of setting among an establishment control over the indigenous people of Anaria. Usually to get the resources and use the population for the benefit of the colonizer. In the image, all the images I am presenting are in Wikimedia Commons. And you see that is a book published in 1552, that is a short account of the destruction of the Indians, and this refers to the Americas. It was written by Bartolome Las Casas, a Spanish priest, that denounced the violence being done against the indigenous people of Peru and beyond. The next slide is another definition of what is colonialism. This is a recent article from 2019 that was published in the National Geographic webpage. The history of colonialism is one of brutal subjugation of indigenous people. Indeed, it's brutal and although there are some positive effects of cultural exchange, there are products that come and products that go. Also, it's violence, structural violence, physical violence, economic, symbolic, psychological, sexual and epistemic. Epistemic violence has to do with the way we had a way of understanding that we were suddenly second class citizens. And the people that were the colonizers were the first class citizens. And here, trying to broaden our understanding about epistemic violence, there are some concepts that come from some European writers like Gramsci, Kultralyemoni, the clips of reason. It has to do with reasoning, making an argument in order to make colonization appearing correct, justifying this violence against the people. This has happened in the Americas and has happened in Africa and in Asia. And also, there is an internal colonialism. Some countries do colonialism inside their territories. That has happened in France, in the US, in Peru and in many countries. One vision from an elite is imposed to the other societies inside one country. It's a shocking experience and you have a book by Franz Fanon from Martinica from the Caribbean that discusses this a lot, the impacts of colonization and also has to do with the loss of memory. And this is very critical because a lot of knowledge developed by civilizations, indigenous civilizations, suddenly was erased, persecuted. And for example, there is a Francisco Gabela, I'm citing some Francisco Gabela quoting him. He wrote, didn't I myself remove more than 30,000 idols by my hands for 30 years from the towns of the Corregimento of Orocheri, Giaojos, Hausa and Chowpi, Guaranicas and other towns and did I burn more than 3000 bodies of the deceased whom they adored? This Francisco Gabela was one of many exerpadores de lotrias. These were people that were in charge of destroying, persecuting, reduce items, persecuting people that accumulated knowledge in Quechua. A person that accumulates not, that knows a lot, that has a lot of wisdom, that gathers the knowledge of a society called a yachac, an amauta too. And these exerpadores were persecuting and disappearing these wise people. And in the Andes, like in other regions, most cultures have ancestral codes, that honor memory, that honor the wisdom of the people that were before the lineage, honor their territory and their nature. In this image, you see Awanka, which is a monolith, present in a temple. This still remains, this exists, this survived the conquest and the colonization, because it was not discovered. It is so old that when the Spanish arrived, it had like 2500 years old, so they missed it and luckily it is still with us. So all many other things were destroyed and this has an impact. It's a loss of memory and this loss of memory, loss of connection with nature, your territory, your lineage has developed a collective amnesia of what was before you, where do you come from, where, who are you? You lose identity and many people are uprooted in a very violent way compared to migrants, for example. Migrants go from the Americas to Europe or from Europe to the Americas and they are kind of uprooted, but in colonization, this is very, very violent. And people don't remember. People don't have the ways to remember and have an impact till the present day. Now I will quote something that said a president of Europe. He said in 2007, Africa's drama is that the African has not entered into history. How can a president say this? How come Africa has not entered history? So this, I quote this because it's an example of the amnesia that people have, not only the colonized people, but also the colonizer. There's a collective amnesia. Some years ago, we were working in Belgium about the memory of Africa in Europe and this memory of what happened in Africa was not told at the school scene, at that time in Belgium. So there are like policies, educational policies that decide what story to tell, what events are being told and which are not. So this is very, very hard because when you don't remember what you did, when you don't, you have this collective amnesia, you usually repeat what you did. History repeats itself if we don't remember. So, saying this, I will start from part of this presentation, which is the Glam Project that has to do with this, the colonizing. We did a Glam Project in a region in the Amazon, in the northern Amazon of Peru. It's called the Takiwasi Center. It's an established center with a great success of 54%. That's really, really big compared to other therapies that try to reduce addiction to cocaine or heroin or other plants, other substances. This Takiwasi Center has received a lot of researchers and many articles are having published about this center. It has a lab and a botanical garden and luckily they have a photographic record. So because we knew them, we had certain relationships, we decided, okay, let's do a Glam Project. Let's liberate your images with a license, a Creative Commons license in Wikimedia Commons. And this was done with Wicaccion Peru, which is the project I am a member, I'm a part of. The process was to develop an alliance, make some accords, do some training. In the picture you see a workshop we had about how to upload images. Then we have to do the revision and then use these images in the Wikipedia. The process started in September 2021 and ended the upload in December 2021, so it was like three months. So all these images are from this Glam Project, the first one in Peru. And I will introduce some concepts of traditional medicine, Amazonian traditional medicine with these pictures. In Indian and Amazonian traditional medicines, there are plants that are sacred, visionary, teachers, but some are very extensive, like tobacco. Tobacco is used not only as a medicine, but also as a ritual plant. It's like a microphone, you can use tobacco to blow it and to make a prayer, because the spirit of the tobacco is a strong one. So that's a sacred plant, like coca, like ayahuasca, like wilka, these plants are very important for many indigenous cultures. Also coca, there is a variety of... So teacher plants are plants that teach knowledge to curanderos, provisions and dreams. I will show how this knowledge is transferred, apart from visions and dreams. And these knowledges are related to the plants' properties, preparation and application. So in the process where a curander or curandera has an initiation that has a lot of years, like 20 years or 10 years, depending on the path that this person takes. So through this initiation, he participates in what we call an Amazonian diet. An Amazonian diet is a moment where a to-be curander or curandera isolates in nature for one year or some months, and diets a specific plant. He is isolated in a small cabin and only has a plant we call yuca or maniocca in Portuguese. No salt, no sugar, no body, herbal baths, ayahuasca ceremonies. An intake of these teacher plants, like in the other slide. So in this process of two months, three months, the curandero starts dreaming and having visions and talking to the spirit, or receiving information from the spirit of the plant through the dreams and the visions he has. In this picture you see a tambo. A tambo is this type of, it's where these curanderos isolate themselves. The food is prepared by someone else, usually the teacher of the curandero. But the idea is to have a moment in isolation so the person can connect to the plant and to himself and clean his mind, his body, his emotions and connect to the spiritual world. So this is part of one of the traditions. Sometimes the tambo is not so well constructed as the one you see. This is the one that Takiwasi Center uses. Magical songs, these are also very important parts of traditional music in the Amazon. Not only in the Amazon, but in the Iorinoco region too. For example, in Tarapoto they call them Icaros. But the Shippivo call them Besho. The Awahun call them Anent. The Kokama call them Mariri. The Wachipaeri call them Echuba. These magical songs have energetic sound and semantic dimensions. And through these songs the spirits are invoked and their help and their intervention is requested during the therapies that these curanderos and curanderas have. I don't want to use the word shaman because it's a continent. In the Amazon they have their names like Paje, Paje, or Sherikyari and many others, Onania. But they have a similar function. They mediate between this world and the spiritual world. In the picture you see Don Solontejo chanting an Icaro with his Shakapa to a small... The Shakapa is this instrument made of leaves. And these songs are received in dreams and visions by the curandero. Each curandero has their own songs. Another type of these magical songs are the Shuba of the Wachipaeri people. And these are on the list of UNESCO, of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. And there are only 12 people that know the songs, know how to sing them. So they are in danger. And most of these traditions, most of these knowledges and practices, technologies of consciousness are endangered. Because with modernization in the Amazon, with the roads, with the forestation, we lose a lot. In this picture you see a modern ayahuasca ceremony in Takiwasi, where people gather around the curandero. There are many traditions. And inside each tradition of the Shippeebo, for example, a lineage of Shippeebos have a different ceremonial structure than their neighbors. Ayahuasca nowadays in Latin America and in Europe and in North America is very popular. Many people come to Peru and there are many gringo shamans. They call themselves, they are called that way, that learn how to, some are doing the right thing, but many other, they are not following traditions and people are dying. People have died in Cusco, in Puerto Maldonado, in Iquitos, because sometimes when these powerful plants are not conducted in the right way, people can die. So it's important to follow a tradition. We have another picture where this maestro Don Solontejo serves ayahuasca to another person. So in this grand project we have 1200 images liberated by Takiwasi. We have rituals, we have plans, we have preparation of plans and we have also curanderos of their archives. Curanderos like Juan Flores, that if you Google in academic Google, Google scholar, he cited. There are many articles by National Geographic talking about Juan Flores or Norma Panduro. So now we have pictures, but not only we have many pictures from curanderos, but also from people that are researchers like Jeremy Narby from Canada, and this picture of Jeremy Narby who wrote The Cosmic Serpent is being used in at least four Wikipedia's, not in Spanish Wikipedia yet. Santiago Manuel Valera is an environmental defender and indigenous leader. He died in 2020 and this picture is being used in the Wikipedia article. And we have also pictures from people that are not from Peru, that also went to Takiwasi like Dr. Jehaya Cegaya from Uganda, and Francisco Sabino from Ecuador that went to Takiwasi. So Francisco Sabino is also a very distinguished curandero in Ecuador and when his article is going to be created we have this picture. All Francisco Sabino is from another tradition as well as this doctor from Uganda. We also have pictures of plant preparations. This is an extract of rosacisa which is used in purges. Sometimes they mix tobacco with rosacisa and you drink it and you purge, you vomit. So it's very important to make this depurations of plants in the Amazonian traditions. Also in Western traditions, if you see words like break fast, means that there is a fast thing, a fast depurates the body. Like in Spanish this ayuno, you break el ayuno. Also we have pictures of plant remedies preparations. Herbal baths are widely used in medicinal, intracional medicine. And also I'm going to present another image of activation of the plants. Plants, when they are signed and blown, it's very important this process because the curandero sinks and talks and prays to the spirit of the plant to activate it and call it to make a healing. So I have a couple of slides more but I'm going to the last one of the pictures which has to do with the soplata, soplata is blowing tobacco. Also very important for cleaning. It cleans the energetic body around the patients. And at the end I ask a question about what can we do to decolonize, recover and root connect our memories? How can we do it from Wikimedia activities? And I think that these type of projects contribute to them. These type of projects bring these practices that are being researched nowadays. Visibilize them, articles of memory and people in memory. This is very important, right? Colonization brings loss of memory, brings collective amnesia, both to the colonizer and the colonized. Here are two quotes by Italo Calvino, more enlightened than our houses are, the more their walls lose ghost. The more you clarify your understanding, you see what is behind a training station in Europe, what has happened in order to have this development. And also one from Turles, memory green. To know where are you and where do you come from? So that's it. Thank you. I don't know if someone has questions, it is too late. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this presentation. And if you have questions, please, we are at Wikimedia and you can write us about what you are doing and what you learned from this presentation. Thanks.