This page respects the original work's rights terms and independently introduces its bibliography, abstract, main results, and limitations. It is not a full translation.
About this resource
This is not a full-text translation of the Portuguese original. It is an independently written detailed introduction based on the publisher’s public text, organizing its research design, relevance to Hapé/Rapé, principal anthropological interpretation, and limitations. The paper follows the recent movement of Huni Kuĩ (Kaxinawá) “forest medicines” between forest and city, centering nixi pae (ayahuasca) and also addressing rapé, sananga, and kambô.
Because rapé is explicitly included among the observed subjects, this is directly relevant ethnography for Hapé/Rapé, but its subject is not the chemistry or treatment outcome of a single product. It examines what terms such as “medicine,” “healing,” “science,” and “forest” do within networks of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, materials, spiritual beings, and urban groups.
Study design
The material consists of ethnographic observation conducted from 2012–2016 and recorded interviews with ritual participants in 2016. The article selected interviews with 3 non-Indigenous participants and explains that Huni Kuĩ accounts are treated in greater detail in the author’s other research. This was a qualitative, multi-sited design following people, rituals, materials, and groups between cities and Indigenous territory.
Actor-network theory and cosmopolitics informed the analysis, in which not only humans but materials and spiritual beings are described as actors creating relations. The study did not use a standardized questionnaire, random sample, comparison group, or medical before-and-after measurement.
Content
In Huni Kuĩ contexts, “forest medicines” include nixi pae, rapé (dume deshke), kambô (kampũ), and sananga. The paper broadly describes rapé as a powder containing tobacco and ash from the bark of particular trees, while formulations are not uniform. Ash itself is culturally considered “medicine,” and meaning is assigned to the raw material, method of blowing, intention, and practitioner. This is ethnographic reporting, not measurement of ash chemistry or pharmacology.
The author places individual uses within a broad conceptual system involving not only the body but thought, spirits, labor, ritual, and relationships with others. In practices moved into cities, additional vocabularies involving meditation, New Age, environmentalism, and therapy are connected. Because ayahuasca is at the network’s center, experiences of rapé alone must be distinguished from experiences in which multiple materials occur close together.
Results
The paper’s central proposal is to view nixi pae as a “technology of connection” and examine how groups with different ontologies create the same setting without complete agreement. Movement from forest to city is not simple transport of materials; it changes shamanic authority, ritual forms, language, economics, environmental discourse, and cultural politics.
Words such as “healing” and “medicine” are easily shared, while what heals, who acts, and how effects are judged differ among actors. These differences may enable connection or produce misunderstanding, idealization, and conflict. The result is a description of such cosmo-ontological connections and conflicts, not a response rate or safe amount.
Limitations
Only 3 non-Indigenous interviews are presented in detail, so diverse Huni Kuĩ positions cannot be compared at the same depth. The study concerns particular networks from 2012–2016 and cannot automatically be generalized to later market expansion or products now in circulation. Learning through involvement in rituals provides an inside perspective but also depends on access, relationships, and the researcher’s position.
The study did not measure nicotine, pH, ash, free nicotine, contaminants, or human exposure from rapé. Participants’ bodily, mental, and spiritual accounts are qualitative material, not clinical outcomes with a control group and diagnostic confirmation. Because multiple “forest medicines” were used in the same settings, effects and harms cannot be attributed to an individual substance.
Safety
Expressions such as “healing,” “cleansing,” and “vitality” are reports about Huni Kuĩ or urban participant vocabulary and practice. The article did not test clinical efficacy, safety, dependence, or acute adverse events. Rapé may contain tobacco, ash, and other plants and varies by product; composition and exposure cannot be inferred from a cultural name alone.
This resource does not reproduce specific administration descriptions from the original and provides no advice about preparation, use, or self-treatment. Cultural value is preserved as evidence distinct from biomedical safety confirmation.
Source and rights
Original source: Meneses GP. Medicinas da floresta: conexões e conflitos cosmo-ontológicos. Horizontes Antropológicos. 2018;24(51):229–258. DOI: 10.1590/s0104-71832018000200009.
Article metadata identifies Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). This page is not a full translation; it independently reconstructs the research scope and principal issues. Extended quotations, photographs, figures, and administration procedures are not reproduced.