Creativity in Shamanic Practices

Shamanic practices provide a vital source of knowledge for a young adult’s personal maturity. In this chapter the ethnographic examples are taken from ayahuasca shamanism. The primary subjective experiences related to shamanism occur in youth, and shamanic practices contribute to construcing personhood and agency. In the second section, after exploring the use of ayahuasca among the Manchineri, so-called kamalampi rituals, I look at shamanic practices as a contact area between community members and nonhuman beings, as well as increasingly between other indigenous groups and non-Indians, also taking into account power relations. Young indigenous people in the Acre region have contributed to new types of interactions between Indians and non-Indians through the development of new networks based on the practice of shamanism. The cultural creativity of Amazonian indigenous communities is especially visible in shamanic practices that are used as new social reference points and allow the personal encounters with various human and nonhuman actors.