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Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
Arrests loom after Peruvian villagers ‘lynch’ tourist accused of killing their shaman

quote:

Five years ago, Sebastian Woodroffe decided to quit his job and leave his home in Canada and travel thousands of miles to the Amazon rain forests to study the healing rituals of indigenous shamans.

A relative’s battle with alcoholism inspired the then-36-year-old father to go, Woodroffe explained in a YouTube video. He was particularly interested in ayahuasca, a sludgelike hallucinogenic potion that some Peruvians call “the sacred vine of the soul,” and that many tourists believe can heal anything from depression to childhood trauma.

Woodroffe wanted to become an addictions counselor, he wrote in a Gofundme pitch to raise funds for his trip, but not a conventional one. He wanted to apprentice with Amazonian healers and “retain some of their treasure in me and my family, and share it with those that wish to learn.”

While it’s not entirely clear what happened to Woodroffe in Peru’s rain forests over the next five years, a friend in Canada told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that he returned from his ayahuasca retreats “troubled” and more distant.

But he kept going back, until late last week.

That, Peruvian authorities say, is when villagers accused Woodroffe of killing a celebrated and beloved local shaman who refused to treat him, and put his face on an amateur wanted poster.

Then a mob caught him, tied a cord around his neck and made a video of him being dragged through the dirt until he died.

Peru’s attorney general ordered the arrest of two suspects in Woodroffe’s death Monday, the Associated Press reported, and has not accused the Canadian of any crime. But prosecutors are now investigating both Woodroffe’s “lynching” and the unsolved shooting of the 81-year-old shaman, Olivia Arévalo Lomas — and how and whether the two deaths are linked.

The shaman

Arévalo was not simply a shaman but also an activist for indigenous rights in this remote rain forest in northeastern Peru. A nephew described her to a Peruvian TV station as “the mother that protects the Earth in the jungle” and “the most beloved woman” in the Shipibo-Konibo tribe.

She descended from a long line of healers and had been working with traditional plant medicine since she was a teen in the early 1950s, according to the Temple of the Way of Light — a traditional healing center where she sang curing songs and performed ayahuasca rituals.

Lately, business has been good for a shaman.

Each year, thousands of tourists from the United States, Australia and Canada travel to the Peruvian Amazon to experiment with ayahuasca, also known as yage. The potion contains dimethyltryptamine, a powerful hallucinogen that is legal in Peru only as part of spiritual exercises.

But the potion has a dark side, too. In 2015, the National Post reported, a British man took ayahuasca during a Peruvian retreat, began “screaming at the top of his lungs” and tried to attack another tourist with a butcher knife.

The tourist killed the British man in self-defense, the paper wrote — one of several violent incidents linked to ayahuasca tourism, even before Arévalo was fatally shot during a ritual last week. Her family said Woodroffe held the gun.

The student

Woodroffe was a person “who likes to poke, and likes to test the boundaries of people’s beliefs,” his friend Yarrow Willard told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., “but is very much a gentle person underneath all that.”

He grew up on Vancouver Island, Willard said, and worked odd jobs in recent years between his trips to Peru.

“He had a beautiful spark to him that people respected and loved,” Willard told the CBC. And even though Woodroffe had become more distant after trying ayahuasca, and would return from his retreats in Peru seeming “troubled,” Willard could not believe his friend capable of violence.

“This man has never had a gun or talked about anything along that line,” he said.

In his online fundraising campaign to study in Peru, Woodroffe spoke of wanting to make several trips to the Amazon and learn Spanish so he could better befriend and learn from its indigenous inhabitants.

“Acceptance of their wisdom’s potency will bring value to the Shipibo,” he wrote. And while his fundraiser fell far short of its $10,000 goal, Woodroffe had apparently been able to make repeated trips since 2013.

By last week he was in the remote Ucayali region of northeastern Peru, among the tribe. There, villagers told the BBC, he met Arévalo and asked for her guidance.

And there, on Thursday, the old shaman was shot dead outside her home.

Accounts of Arévalo’s death conflict wildly. A prosecutor said no one witnessed it, and no weapon was found, according to the BBC.

But residents told an indigenous news outlet that witnesses saw Woodroffe shoot Arévalo multiple times after she sang an ikaro, or curing song. The shaman’s family claimed she had refused to conduct a ritual with ayahuasca for the Canadian, the BBC wrote, provoking his rage.

When residents could not find Woodroffe after the shooting, a crude “wanted” bulletin circulated online.

“SE BUSCA Sebastian Woodofre de nacionalidad canadiense,” the poster read, above a photo of Woodroffe’s unshaven face. “SE PAGA RECOMPENSA!!!”

It would not take long to find him.

‘There is justice’
Arévalo’s killing spurred outrage within her tribe and across Peru, particularly in light of many recent unsolved killings of environmental and human rights activists in the region.

The Amazon was cited in a 2016 study by the environmental watchdog group Global Witness as one of the regions worldwide with the most killings of activists, particularly indigenous activists — often over disputes about mining, logging, dams and other hallmarks of industrialization.

In the thinly policed remote regions of the Amazon, the BBC wrote, “crimes often go unpunished [and] communities sometimes bypass the police altogether, choosing to punish those they suspect of committing crimes themselves.”

Residents of Arévalo’s town were particularly frustrated about a double standard in the way indigenous people were treated in the criminal justice system, local residents told Peruvian news broadcasters. They were angry at the tourists.

“There is justice for those with money,” one local resident told TV Peru.

“A foreigner can come and kill us, day after day, like dogs or cats, and nothing happens,” a woman told a Peruvian vice minister on TV, the weekend after Arévalo’s death.

Officials urged patience. A Peruvian ombudsman wrote tweets condemning the killing, but a prosecutor said it would take weeks to test gunshot residue on the woman’s body. They were looking into claims of Woodroffe’s involvement, the BBC wrote, but also “the theory that she may have been killed by another foreigner over an unpaid debt” and other leads.

That didn’t matter to the mob that caught Woodroffe.

Peruvian authorities have confirmed that he is the man seen in a cellphone video shot last week and shared online — a man gibbering and moaning as he lies in a mud puddle, surrounded by dozens of people in a village of dirt streets and thatch-roofed huts.

Most of the onlookers stare silently. One loops a cord around Woodroffe’s neck and drags him from the puddle onto the grass and then across the grass until he stops moving.

Woodroffe’s body was found in a makeshift grave over the weekend, less than a mile from Arévalo’s home. An autopsy revealed that he had been beaten, then strangled, prosecutors told Reuters.

Peru’s interior ministry released a statement vowing to aggressively investigate his killing and that of the shaman.

It’s unclear whether the two suspects ordered arrested in the lynching have been caught, and the Associated Press reported that investigators are studying Woodroffe’s body to find out whether he really did kill the shaman from whom he had once hoped to learn.

“We want the people of the Amazon to know that there is justice,” lead prosecutor Ricardo Palma Jimenez told a Peruvian news station, “but not justice by their own hands.”

I don't know if it's in this one, but he left behind his newborn (now four) to start doing these anhuyasha trips. A relative's recent alcoholism apparently drove this do-nothing dirtbag to... ask friends for money on Gufundme to get drugs?? For years??

anyway the murderderd the poo poo out of him

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china bot
Sep 7, 2014

you listen HERE pal
SAY GOODBYE TO TELEPHONE SEX
Plaster Town Cop
ayahuasca aka the drug Ben Stiller takes in While We're Young

1gnoirents
Jun 28, 2014

hello :)
Yeah street justice has its problems but sometimes its alright

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

china bot posted:

ayahuasca aka the drug Ben Stiller takes in While We're Young

never seen it

Blue Star
Feb 18, 2013

by FactsAreUseless
ahuasca as the potential to reveal aspects of reality that we are not normally aware of, OP. We are all children of the cosmos, and we are all a part of an endless, infinite trapestry of being which unfolds constantly and forever. But this guy was a real jerk and did not know how to handle the insights he had glimpsed with ayahuasca, causing him to go nuts and kill that dude. Now his existence is stamped forever into the Akashic Records as an rear end in a top hat who killed a dude and left his kid behind. Remember, we are all potentially capable of True Cosmic Awareness and Higher Universal Conciousness, but if you aren't spiritually "readY" it can backfire. This man was not ready. ANd unfortunately another man had to die for it. You gotta be careful with this poo poo, y'all.

Kak
Sep 27, 2002
Should have rolled a warlock

ALFbrot
Apr 17, 2002
please explain the title of this thread

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

Blue Star posted:

ahuasca as the potential to reveal aspects of reality that we are not normally aware of, OP. We are all children of the cosmos, and we are all a part of an endless, infinite trapestry of being which unfolds constantly and forever. But this guy was a real jerk and did not know how to handle the insights he had glimpsed with ayahuasca, causing him to go nuts and kill that dude. Now his existence is stamped forever into the Akashic Records as an rear end in a top hat who killed a dude and left his kid behind. Remember, we are all potentially capable of True Cosmic Awareness and Higher Universal Conciousness, but if you aren't spiritually "readY" it can backfire. This man was not ready. ANd unfortunately another man had to die for it. You gotta be careful with this poo poo, y'all.

The shaman was a woman

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

ALFbrot posted:

please explain the title of this thread

I needed it to not sound like a Pick thread so people would give it a shot before pooping it up

T.S. Smelliot
Apr 23, 2010

by FactsAreUseless
Aya gotta huasca is this true justice??

gary oldmans diary
Sep 26, 2005
he looks like someone who should die imo
and he seems to match the description of someone who should die

Brother Tadger
Feb 15, 2012

I'm accidentally a suicide bomber!

Altered States was a pretty crazy movie. Looks like the sequel is dialing it up to 11.

Rakosi
May 5, 2008

D&D: HASBARA SQUAD
NO-QUARTERMASTER


From the river (of Palestinian blood) to the sea (of Palestinian tears)
hey if you 'go native' you can't expect to keep your first world life expectancy too.

Blue Star
Feb 18, 2013

by FactsAreUseless

Pick posted:

The shaman was a woman

Wow, thats extremely ignorant of you. Okay, first off, "man" and "woman" are arbitrary labels that we attach to loose concepts. Ayahuasca helps reveal that our normal conceptions are merely useful illusions to function in the world of everyday space and time. Causality. Okay, and second, "man" is simply short for "woman", in this case, since "woman" contains the word "man" and so I was simpyl abbreviating it. Maybe you should take some ayahuasca and get your mind expanded.

Rakosi
May 5, 2008

D&D: HASBARA SQUAD
NO-QUARTERMASTER


From the river (of Palestinian blood) to the sea (of Palestinian tears)
We say Shaperson now, its 2018 guys

china bot
Sep 7, 2014

you listen HERE pal
SAY GOODBYE TO TELEPHONE SEX
Plaster Town Cop

Pick posted:

never seen it

you would not like it, but it furthers the idea that white men seek out ayahuasca in a pathetic attempt to seem cool and worldly

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

Rakosi posted:

hey if you 'go native' you can't expect to keep your first world life expectancy too.

buuutttt you go to other countries to exploit the relative value of your currency! :cry:

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

china bot posted:

you would not like it, but it furthers the idea that white men seek out ayahuasca in a pathetic attempt to seem cool and worldly

thats too bad cuz i like most ben stiller movies, guy's a riot

Nice Guy Patron
Jun 29, 2015
Ok, so if his Gofundme fell short of its goal, where the hell was he getting money to make multiple extra trips? From his wife? dipping into his kids college fund?

Rakosi
May 5, 2008

D&D: HASBARA SQUAD
NO-QUARTERMASTER


From the river (of Palestinian blood) to the sea (of Palestinian tears)
its not that drugs are bad, but they do have the worst loving fans in the world.

china bot
Sep 7, 2014

you listen HERE pal
SAY GOODBYE TO TELEPHONE SEX
Plaster Town Cop

Pick posted:

thats too bad cuz i like most ben stiller movies, guy's a riot

it's more a noah baumbach movie

Literally A Person
Jan 1, 1970

Smugworth Wuz Here
Probably shouldn't troll around for drugs in the deep heart of the Amazon.

Like, I mean, it's probably just a bad idea.

Blue Star
Feb 18, 2013

by FactsAreUseless

Pick posted:

thats too bad cuz i like most ben stiller movies, guy's a riot

He gets a bad rap, i think. I enjoyed Meet the Parents, Theres Something About Mary, Zoolander, etc. He was great in Heavyweights which is probably his greatest role.

edited to add: Ooh, and Tropic Thunder

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

Rakosi posted:

its not that drugs are bad, but they do have the worst loving fans in the world.

food isn't bad either but have you seen the major food fans? yikes

Crash_N_Burn
Apr 19, 2014

Heart of Dorkness

Blue Star
Feb 18, 2013

by FactsAreUseless
"Feel the chi...Repulse the monkey....Part the wild horse's mane..."

Literally A Person
Jan 1, 1970

Smugworth Wuz Here
In general I think killing tribal holy people is wrong. Sounds crazy, I know.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
A earlier article explained he was doing this to become an addiction counselor. lol.

quote:

It was 2013 when Sebastian Woodroffe decided to quit his job and leave his home in Canada to study plant medicine in Peru. A relative’s battle with alcoholism had inspired him to “fix the family’s spirit” and pursue a career as an addictions counselor, he said in a YouTube video.

mike12345
Jul 14, 2008

"Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries."





didn't read the op, but apparently the son of the dead woman owed money to some gang, he might have killed her to get money or something. so the canadian was just a convenient outsider you could blame.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

quote:

Woodroffe, then a 36-year-old father of a 4-year-old boy, began raising money for an apprenticeship with traditional healers in the Amazon. He felt a responsibility to “support this culture and retain some of their treasure in me and my family, and share it with those that wish to learn,” he wrote on a fundraising page. He was particularly interested in experiencing ayahuasca, a sludgelike hallucinogenic potion used by indigenous shamans in spiritual exercises.

oh I guess the son IS old enough to know his father has been killed, and probably old enough to pull up the video

That Robot
Sep 16, 2004

ask me anything about robots
Buglord
Dude should not have killed that cool shaman lady.

That Robot
Sep 16, 2004

ask me anything about robots
Buglord
Also Pick I'm not sure what's going on in your av but I think it's cool.

Where is it from?

Literally A Person
Jan 1, 1970

Smugworth Wuz Here

That Robot posted:

Dude should not have killed that cool shaman lady.

Exactly.

ruddiger
Jun 3, 2004

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuZXr8GBzxA

Rakosi
May 5, 2008

D&D: HASBARA SQUAD
NO-QUARTERMASTER


From the river (of Palestinian blood) to the sea (of Palestinian tears)
how do you even get to be a shaman anyway?

Hardawn
Mar 15, 2004

Don't look at the sun, but rather what it illuminates
College Slice
un gringo se pone, noticias a las 11

hevnz 2 murgatroyd
Apr 13, 2018

by Smythe

That Robot posted:

Dude should not have killed that cool shaman lady.

Literally A Person posted:

In general I think killing tribal holy people is wrong. Sounds crazy, I know.

There's a pretty good chance he didn't kill the shaman lady.

She was a leader in asserting indigenous land rights, to the exclusion of logging and oil companies and such. When the evil capitalists were looking for a patsy to pin her murder on, I imagine the Canadian drug weeaboo came walking by and they saw him as a giant pigeon, like when Homer Simpson walks past the carnies.

Literally A Person
Jan 1, 1970

Smugworth Wuz Here

hevnz 2 murgatroyd posted:

There's a pretty good chance he didn't kill the shaman lady.

She was a leader in asserting indigenous land rights, to the exclusion of logging and oil companies and such. When the evil capitalists were looking for a patsy to pin her murder on, I imagine the Canadian drug weeaboo came walking by and they saw him as a giant pigeon like when Homer Simpson walks past the carnies.

I did say in general, meaning that generally and in most contexts it is wrong for anyone to kill tribal holy people.

hevnz 2 murgatroyd
Apr 13, 2018

by Smythe

Literally A Person posted:

I did say in general, meaning that generally and in most contexts it is wrong for anyone to kill tribal holy people.

Agree to disagree, friend. I need that land for logs. Logs to make wooden products.

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Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
yeah it's not clear he killed her but he did a lot of things that make him a credible suspect in a place where this is how justice works

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