Welcome to Shipibo Spirit, a web-based catalog of jewelery made in cooperation with the Indigenous Shipibo people of the Peruvian Amazon. If you only have a minute of free time, and want a quick look at some jewelry photos, please click on bracelets, earrings, or necklaces.
One Minute Overview Video:
The Shipibo's ancestral homelands are located around the city of Pucallpa, which is in the central Amazon region of Peru. The Ucayali River, which is a tributary of the Amazon, is their river. They are known globally as brilliant and inventive weavers and potters, and more and more, these days, as the sacred caretakers of the Ayahuasca ceremony. Click on the following link to read about Shipibo origin myths, and to see videos of their homeland:
They are also very prolific makers of natural seed jewelery, which they not only sell to tourists, but also to other tribal people in the Amazon Basin. Seeds have been used as ornamentation, as well as for ritual and spiritual purposes by the Shipibo for thousands of years, so who better to acquire these little treasures from but the caretakers themselves!
Here is a photo montage of life in the traditional homeland of the Shipibo, accompanied by beautiful Icaros, spiritual singing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENXTCgXokeE
Unfortunately, as in many parts of the world, the Shipibo are threatened by outside forces, including logging, oil exploration, and other forms of resource extraction. This has also resulted in the economically driven relocation of many Shipibo to urban centers such as Lima.
Here is an article about the Shipibo in Lima:
http://enperublog.com/2009/04/13/the-shipibos-of-the-river-rimac/
The Shipibo friends that I work with are not charity cases. They are not looking for you, or any other person to send donations to them. What they want to do, is to share what they know and create with you, and the world. Cultural sharing is the future of human cultural evolution; by learning from each other, we learn how similar we all are, and how, collectively, our planet belongs to all of us. In this way the future looks bright; hope shines eternally.
