Don Alejandro Jahuanchi
In May 1997, Don Alejandro Jahuanchi, a 7th generation healer from the Peruvian Amazon rainforest, visited Oregon. He was accompanied by three other Peruvians who assisted him in various ways. We were blessed by their stay in Lacomb, as he shared his wisdom with the immediate Ancient Ways’ community as well as with others who came from all over the Willamette Valley to learn. He shared his healing and philosophy from the Amazon with a desire to help civilized man reconnect with the essence of nature. The following October 1997, four members of the Ancient Ways community went to visit him at his home in the Amazonian jungle, where he was developing a cultural center called Wanamey. The following February 1998 he passed on. We will always be grateful for his time with us.
Anyone interested in further information about the Wanamey Center, see web pages for Centro Cultural Wamaney. Feel free to contact Joel Jahuanchi, Don Alejandro’s son at: grupo@wanamey.org.
Don Alberto Manqueriapa
In May 2005 spiritual leader and healer of the mysterious Amazonian nation “Huachipayris” from the pristine jungle of Peru, Don Alberto, came to visit us in Oregon. He was initiated in his childhood in the hard but generous healing world. He fulfilled long journeys deep in the heart of the Amazon, where the voices of the spirits of birds, animals, trees, plants, rivers and lakes gave him secrets of the healing energy of nature.
Sharing a tour in the US with Don Ramon from the Andes, they offered ceremony, healings, and friendship to the Ancient Ways community in the mid-Willamette Valley. I remember him as being full of a child’s heart, suggesting we love each other in that simplicity to heal our world.
Herlinda Augustin Fernandez and Enrique Sinure
Herlinda Augustin Fernandez, a Shipibo matriarch and curandera and Enrique Sinure, also a Shipibo elder and curandero, visited the US in May, 2008 by attending the 4th annual conference for the Society for Shamanic Practitioners. Meeting them at the conference and being moved by their countenance, Ancient Ways Executive Director, Jaiaen Beck, made travel arrangements to visit the Amazon that fall to further explore the unique Shipibo approach to healing through working with music and art. Four Ancient Ways members visited this very traditional family, living with them in the jungle. We spent time learning about traditional healing and ceremonies as well as sharing in the family’s music celebration. We were able to sponsor 4 of their children there to attend school for the following year, as well as purchase many of the family artist’s weavings.
At this time, Herlinda was very ill and not present with us in the village. We attended healings and prayer ceremonies on her behalf as she was receiving medical care in Lima. She passed away December 2010 from cancer. Herlinda was one of the few people left who retained the ancient knowledge of the Shipibo healing song tradition. She was doing everything possible to pass this special wisdom and practice on to her family members because the weavings and other art are now becoming commonplace at craftsmarkets so that the song patterns painted or woven into the tapestries are not being sung, only replicated. She will be dearly missed.