Onanya Rogelia

Onanya Rogelia is a traditional Shipibo doctor who been practising ancestral medicine for over 40 years. She is an exceptionally skilled indigenous Master Healer who has an immense and vast knowledge of the medicinal plants of the Amazon.

She is an esteemed member of ASOMASHK - The Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo Association of Onanyabo/Ancestral Healers. The word ‘Onanya’ is a Shipibo term that translates as ‘one who knows’, ‘one who cures with the plants’.

Onanya Rogelia is a Maestra who comes from a long lineage of Shipibo healers. She was born deep in the Amazonian jungle, along the Pisqui river in Peru. Once as a young child and once as a teenager, she experienced significant long term illness, where she was ultimately healed by the plants and her Onanya grandfather.

Rogelia grew up in a time and place where she describes, ‘There were no pills, you went to the plants for everything’. When she was a young child she was deeply interested and drawn to learn how to heal and cure people. When Rogelia was 11 years old, her mother began taking her along to learn how to attend and support childbirths. She went on to learn from her Onanya grandfather, her uncle and older brothers, as well as her mother. She has dieted many, many plants, at times for up to 2 years in length.

Making the medicine accessible and affordable is important to Rogelia, and money is not her central priority. She has a large and loving family, with many grandchildren all of whom adore her, which is why she prefers to live and work close to home.