Shipibo-Conibo

The Shipibo-Conibo people the Ucayali River of Peruvian Amazonia, once two groups fused by marriage and shared ritual into one nation. Riverine farmers and fishers, they plant plantain, manioc and cotton on the floodplain's rise and fall, and navigate black-water lakes in dugout canoes. Their fame rests on kené: geometric labyrinth designs, sung into being by shamans drinking ayahuasca, then painted on faces, pots, textiles and house beams, a visual music of astonishing precision. Jesuit and Franciscan missions, the rubber boom's debt-slavery and later logging and oil all pressed the river towns, yet the Shipibo-Conibo grew into one of Amazonia's most populous and organised peoples, with federations, bilingual schools and a celebrated pottery and textile art. Santa Clara painters and onaya healers keep the designs singing. Shipibo and Conibo speech merged as completely as the two peoples into one river nation, and communal rituals sealed the fusion long before the state named them one tribe.