WASKA: The Forest is My Family

In the search for healing, Western societies often look for answers in Indigenous knowledge and cultures — ways of being that have maintained the kinds of community connections and spiritual practices that many in the West seek today. As commodification and extraction from the Amazon Rainforest extends to the plant medicine hayakwaska, Nina Gualinga, from the Sarayaku Peoples, the granddaughter of a Yachak (shaman), reveals the essence of what it means to live as part of the forest, as family.