OUR OBJECTIVES

Supporting Jivaro Indians in the Amazonian Rainforest

Safe-keeping of native people traditional medicine

Promotion of natives traditions in Europe

Our actions

1. Medical support for Jivaro tribes

From 1992 to 2002, following indigenous requests, our main action was to support primary health care systems in the Amazonian rainforest for various Indian tribes, in collaboration with the French NGO Pharmaciens Sans Frontières, the European Community, the Ecuadorian Ministry of Public Health, the Shuar Federation (FICSH), the Achuar Organization (OINAE), Zapara Organizations (ONAZE, ONZAE, NAZAE), the Shiwiar Organization (ONSHIPAE) and the Awa Federation (FCA).
This program involved the creation of a communitary pharmacy (botica popular) outside the forest in each indigenous headquarters, donations of WHO’s basic medicines and the training of indigenous health staffs. After ten years, this program covers now 30,000 Indians with 3 central pharmacies, 50 basic nurses and overmore 200 health promoters.

2. Rescue of Shuar, Achuar and Zapara’s traditional medicines

From 1993 to 1997, we provide technical support for indigenous teams involved in herbal medicine investigations. This program led to a Shuar database, a self-medication handbook for indigenous families entitled “Medicina en la selva, cuando no hay remedios” and two botanical gardens for agronomic studies.
This year, our second phase will focus on building-up an integrated medicine center for native territory. The aim of this experimental program is to work towards a full collaboration between different health actors : the indigenous nurse, the curandero specialist in herbal medicines and the shaman working traditionally with psychedelic beverages. This center using a holistic approach will, on one hand, revalorize tradipracticians integrating them in the official health system and on the other hand, allow auto-evaluation of indigenous therapies. In few years, they will be able to receive foreign students or tradipracticians and provide a firm base for fair bioprospection contracts.


3. Promotion of Amazonian traditions in Europe

Created by a handful of men and women passionately fond of Amazonian traditions, Arutam is also dedicated in spreading worldwide the indigenous vision of the world. By writing and painting, by meeting and multimedia exhibitions upon the Jivaros culture, our foundation tries to promote a major change in the occidental way of thinking. In particular, we published three books : “Indiens Jivaros” (1997) which describes the actual situation of Shuar and Achuar people, “L’Homme-Nature” (2000) summarized below and "Les Chamans" (2001 and 2005), a worldwide description of shamanism.

The Alliance with Nature What if the world in which we live was nothing but a dream ? A dream built by generations of men and women within the continuity of a culture. An illusion endlessly reinvented by humanity in search of the unattainable. Three years spent in the Amazon have allowed the author to explore this other way of perceiving life. For Jivaro Indians, it is our ideas, rather than our senses, that  constitute the world. Living within the environment rather than surviving against it. Perceiving a universe where everything is linked. Trusting in one’s dreams. Feeling “the here and now”. Believing before seeing. A multitude of outlooks that express an osmosis with universe which was the instinctive approach adopted by whole humankind for millenaries. As the last remaining primordial traditions of the “wild world” are threatened with extinction, engulfed by a self-satisfied new current, so the world becomes swamped by one single version of reality. This book situates itself at the crossing of these two paths. The author compares two schools of thought, one of them Amerindian and creator of human worlds, the other Western and transformer of a universe external to men. One allied with Nature and all that is sacred, the other in conflict with these very same things. It is probably at the heart of this surprising confrontation between Indian-ness and Modern life, between Man as Nature and Man as God that the stakes of this new millenium lie. We are looking for an English or American editor for these three books.....

Our Project

1. Rescue of the Sapara’s language

Close neighbours and ancestral enemies of the Achuar, the Saparas were decimated ninety years ago by a measles epidemic, their number falling down from 30,000 to one hundred in ten years. The Sapara’s language will die in the next years if we do nothing : only twenty Indians speak this language, most of them are old. It is still time to rescue Sapara’s myths and legends in their original language, to save Sapara’s vocabulary and grammar in order to teach it to the younger generation, to preserve this millenary human heritage from death and maintain the ethnodiversity.