World weaver

Sitting on the wooden floor of his grandson’s house in the village, Apurinã shaman Camilo Matoma inhales rapé (awiri) with his mixikano, made from harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja) feathers. Rapé is a mixture of tobacco leaves (grown in small plots) with ashes from the bark of a tree species (akutãta) that inhabits the terra firme forests of the Middle Purus region. Used in rituals by shamans along with coca leaves (Erythroxylum sp.), the everyday use of rapé became common among youth during the struggle for Indigenous land demarcation in the 1990s. This ancestral alliance between people and (spirits of) tobacco is a two-way street. On one hand, it is a fascinating process of plant domestication; on the other, it activates the Apurinã’s “cosmopolitics” with the beings of the forest.