Waxy Yawanawá

ARCHETYPE: Mother. Mountain’s guardian with ancient force, pure heart and magical voice.

PERSONAL JOURNEY: My name is Waxy Yawanawá, together with my sisters Hushahu and Putanny, I am one of the very few women who completed the sacred one year muká diet. We became the first-ever females pajés (shamans) of the Yawanawá indigenous people. My father cacique Raimundo Luiz (Tuíkuru), authorized us, and we carried out the diet in the village Mutum, with the teachings of the legendary eldest pajé Tatá and the support of his other sisters.

For us muká diet is the most important initiation in the process of acquiring shamanic power and knowledge. For one year I was isolated in the spiritual center of my brother Matsini Luiz Yawanawá, the spiritual leader and chief of aldeia Mutum. The initiation involves the parallel processes of ingesting sacred plants, the memorization of knowledge (songs, prayers, use of sacred plants) and periods of seclusion.

I entered the spiritual path in 2009 and in 2017 I opened my own study center at Mawa Yuxyn -spirit of the mountain in Yawanawá language. This jungle mountain is in one of the most sacred places for the Yawanawá people, the indigenous territory of Rio Gregório in Acre.

I am the guardian of Mawa Yuxyn. Together, with my two sons Huke Nete, Matsini Yawanawá and Aroa Ayán, we receive people from all over the world, healing physical, mental, emotional and spiritual ailments, and opening life paths amongst other spiritual practices. A place known to be home to the spirits of children, women and men whom people passing by with boats would hear laugh, cry, talk, but when entering the jungle mountain no one was ever found to be there.

We work with the ancestral medicines of the forest: uni (Ayahuasca), kapum (kambó), sananga and sepá. I also prepare the Yawanawá Força Feminina rapé. This traditional dried tobacco and tree ashes powder is prepared with the ashes from the Tsunu bark. The Tsunu is a long and majestic tree, being considered one of the most sacred of the Yawanawá people. It is a very special rapé since it is a medicine that represents a female conquest of Yawanawá women within our spirituality.

ROLE: Medicine woman. Guardian and musician of sacred ceremony space.