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 original paper. It is an independently written detailed introduction based on the publisher’s bibliography and abstract and a public paper PDF, organizing the research scope, principal concepts, relationship to Hapé/Rapé, and interpretive limits. The subject is a religious and kinship alliance formed between the Céu do Mar Santo Daime church in Rio de Janeiro and Yawanawá leaders in Acre.
Rapé is directly described alongside ayahuasca, sananga, kambô, and muka as a “forest medicine” and part of exchanges involving movement of knowledge, songs, objects, and people. The research focus, however, was not the constituents or bodily effects of an individual rapé product, but the process through which multiple social actors build relationships while giving different meanings to the same materials and rituals. It is therefore an adjacent ethnography for Hapé/Rapé, not clinical research.
Study design
The paper is based on 2 years of participant observation at Céu do Mar, a 20-day visit to the Yawanawá Indigenous territory Terra Indígena Rio Gregório, and 8 interviews involving both daimistas and Yawanawá participants. It connects shared rituals at an urban church with events in Indigenous locations including Nova Esperança and Mutum, following speech, ritual, travel, marriage and kinship relations, and exchanges of objects and knowledge as 1 case.
The researchers placed the Yawanawá logic of “making others kin” alongside the language of “eclecticism” through which Santo Daime participants express openness, analyzing the same alliance from 2 perspectives. This was qualitative research describing a limited network in depth, not a design using participant counts to estimate a representative population.
Content
Within the alliance, substances including uni/daime, rapé, sananga, kambô, and muka, along with songs, dances, ritual techniques, adornments, and words, moved between cities and Indigenous territory. Rapé is broadly introduced as a powder containing tobacco, bark, and ash, but no samples were collected or chemically analyzed. Although these materials share the category “forest medicine,” their compositions, routes, hazards, and cultural authorities remain distinct.
For Yawanawá participants, alliances with non-Indigenous people are understood through a logic of long-term exchange and kin-making. At Céu do Mar, Yawanawá aesthetics, vocabulary, and rituals are connected to established Santo Daime, Spiritist, and Umbanda frameworks. The authors argue that the parties collaborate through practical misunderstandings and gaps in translation rather than completely sharing the same meaning.
Results
Through the alliance, “forest medicines,” songs and objects referring to Indigenous peoples, and adapted ritual forms entered Santo Daime settings, creating spaces where participants enacted kinship with the Yawanawá or a sense of “becoming Indigenous.” For Yawanawá participants, effects included movement into cities, external resources, prestige, cultural revitalization, and expanded exchange networks with non-Indigenous people. Change was not 1-way; it affected practices and self-representation on both sides.
The authors did not explain the relationship through harmony alone. They showed multiple value systems, asymmetrical power, idealized images of Indigenous people, environmental discourse, and mismatched meaning. The “result” is analysis of social relations and translation processes, not measurement of therapeutic effects from rapé or another substance.
Limitations
The case centers on 1 Santo Daime church and some Yawanawá leaders and does not represent every Yawanawá person, Santo Daime church, or urban ritual. 2 years of participant observation and 8 interviews can describe relationships deeply, but findings depend on position, access, and timing of speech. Dissent within communities or views of people not participating in the alliance may not receive equal weight.
The study did not measure tobacco species, ash, pH, total nicotine, free nicotine, exposure amount, or adverse events from rapé. Because it concerns a network of multiple substances centered around ayahuasca, a cultural account about 1 material cannot be repurposed as pharmacology or safety evidence for another.
Safety
Participants or leaders calling something “medicine,” “healing,” or “cleansing” does not establish medical efficacy or quality assurance. The study included no diagnostic criteria, control group, clinical outcomes, or safety follow-up and cannot determine hazards or interactions by substance. A label of Indigenous origin and the existence of a kinship alliance do not automatically guarantee a product’s authenticity, safety, or approval by an entire community.
This resource provides no advice about preparation, administration, participation, or self-treatment involving rapé, ayahuasca, sananga, kambô, or another ritual. Descriptions of cultural relationships must remain separate from clinical claims.
Source and rights
Original source: Platero LD, de Rose IS. “Forest medicines,” Kinship Alliances, and Equivocations in the Contemporary Dialogues between Santo Daime and the Yawanawá. Anthropology of Consciousness. 2022;33(2):279–306. DOI: 10.1111/anoc.12160.
Publisher metadata indicates Wiley/American Anthropological Association rights, and no open adaptation license was identified. This page is therefore not a verbatim translation; it summarizes the public bibliography, research design, and principal issues in independent language. Extended quotations, song lyrics, ritual procedures, and figures are not reproduced.