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The scene seems absurd, but it is not uncommon: an Indigenous leader is stopped on the road while transporting his ancestral medicine. The police officer, unsure of what to do, looks at the jugs as if they were drugs. On the other extreme, ayahuasca is exported to the four corners of the world for ceremonies in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and even Oceania. Between these two extremes lies an abyss that reveals one of the most intriguing contradictions of contemporary Brazil.
Issues such as these were debated at a public hearing held on November 28 in Rio Branco, Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon. The hearing was convened by prosecutors Lucas Costa Almeida Dias and Luidgi Merlo Paiva dos Santos and was attended by Indigenous peoples, representatives of ayahuasca religions, public security forces, cultural organizations, as well as members of the government, scholars and researchers. According to the prosecutors, the initiative was prompted by the growing need for concrete regulations for the transportation, collection, and ritual use of ayahuasca.
The Paradox of Legality
Ayahuasca has been regulated in Brazil for religious use since the 1980s, the result of a pioneering process involving researchers, the government, and religious communities. It was a historic victory, the result of decades of coordination. Groups such as Alto Santo and ICEFLU (Santo Daime), União do Vegetal, and Barquinha have been actively involved since that time, developing regulations based on their own practices. As Fernando de La Roque Couto, from ICEFLU, pointed out: “We participated in the GMT in 2006 and 2007, generating the Deontological Principles that still guarantee our rights to religious freedom today.”
But this participation reveals an important aspect of the process: the regulations were developed in dialogue with groups that already had structures compatible with state expectations. These institutions were able to adapt to the religious model because they already had: a CNPJ (Corporate Taxpayer ID), an institutional framework, a fixed ritual calendar, and strict production control. Alto Santo, for example, has kept detailed records of each batch for decades, including the amount of vine, leaves, liters produced, and annual consumption. “We have never sold a drop of Daime,” said Antônio Alves, representative of the center. “Everything is for our own use.”
The resulting regulation protects those who already operated institutionally, but leaves uncovered modes of organization that do not fit the church-CNPJ model. This adaptation has a cost that needs to be acknowledged. Furthermore, it must be recognized that ayahuasca did not originate in churches. It comes from much earlier, from systems of knowledge that do not operate according to the institutional logic of the Brazilian state.
This protection is geographically limited and socially unequal. It works for those who remain in villages, within demarcated lands. For the thousands of Indigenous people living in urban contexts, this protection disappears.
Technically, the restrictions of the CONAD Resolution do not apply to rituals performed on Indigenous territories, where the 1988 Constitution guarantees autonomy. But this protection is geographically limited and socially unequal. It works for those who remain in villages, within demarcated lands. For the thousands of Indigenous people living in urban contexts, this protection disappears.
As Daiara Tukano reported: “We had to open a church so we could take our medicine safely in the city.” Indigenous peoples who have been using this drink for millennia must fit into European Christian categories. This shows that the Brazilian state still operates with conceptual tools that are inadequate to deal with the cultural and epistemic diversity it should protect.
A Double-Edged Sword
As anthropologist Henrique Antunes noted at the hearing: “Regulation is a double-edged sword. It provides protection, but also control and constraint. You have to establish protocols, adapt, include new practices, and eliminate others.”
The problem, explains Antunes, is that the state operates with categories that were not made for Indigenous peoples. When talking about “religion,” “church,” and “CNPJ” (Corporate Taxpayer ID), one starts from Christian and bureaucratic assumptions that simply do not describe the ontological logic of these peoples. Indigenous epistemologies from the Amazon are often performative, relational, linked to the territory and the beings of the forest, and do not fit into these frameworks.
The problem … is that the state operates with categories that were not made for Indigenous peoples.
This tension is rarely recognized in public debates. When people demand “more oversight” and “stricter regulations” — and these demands came up several times at the hearing — we must ask: oversight in favor of whom? Regulations according to what criteria? Because more complex bureaucratic structures tend to favor those who already have the resources to navigate these complexities.
The example of the CNPJ is illustrative. No one at the hearing was able to point out where the document that instituted this requirement for the transport of ayahuasca is located. It was one of those bureaucratic mutations that became the norm without ever having been law. And it works as a filter: large, formalized groups are able to comply. Small, traditional communities are left vulnerable. As Henrique Antunes stated, “this requirement not only hinders Indigenous peoples, but also small groups that do not have the same structures.”
Environmental manager Igor Antunes questioned the bureaucratic procedures related to the interstate transport of ayahuasca. In CONAD’s regulation through Resolution No. 01 of 2010, this topic is only presented in the proposals section, in which the GMT proposes that CONAD refer the matter to the competent state agencies to regulate the interstate transport of ayahuasca, after hearing from interested parties.
According to the resolution, there has not yet been a specific definition regarding the transport of the tea, but rather a suggestion that CONAD refer the matter to the relevant state agencies in the future to address this issue. However, ayahuasca is being seized with documentation requirements for its transport.
These cases demonstrate that there are still doubts regarding the bureaucratic processes involved in transporting ayahuasca. Although there is no document determining the bureaucratic procedures necessary for shipping the tea, specific documentation is already being requested for its transport.
The Controversy of Cultural Appropriation
The issue of cultural appropriation was also raised at the hearing, but in a way that deserves further nuance. Elaine Baiana stated categorically: “There is no way to avoid engaging in cultural appropriation” when non-Indigenous people conduct work with ayahuasca. It is an important position, but it is not the only one among Indigenous people themselves.
At the same time, several Indigenous peoples are promoting festivals that welcome non-Indigenous people, offering workshops on traditional songs, allowing participants to go on diets, and even conducting ceremonies outside their territories. The Eskawatã Kawayai Festival, organized by the Huni Kuin, is an example of this, an event that mobilizes significant resources, strengthens political alliances, and raises international awareness of the struggle to protect the forest.
How should we interpret this? Is it a contemporary form of colonialism and appropriation that Indigenous peoples are forced to accept out of economic necessity? Or is it Indigenous agency building new alliances, using ayahuasca as a tool of cosmic diplomacy, as suggested by Prof. Leonardo Lessin? “Indigenous peoples have become international political actors in defense of the Amazon. I met people from the British royal family at the Indigenous festival. People from all over the world,” Lessin observed.
The reality is that there are multiple positions among Indigenous peoples themselves. Francisco Pianko, from the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Juruá River, reported that since 2016 they have been holding the Indigenous Ayahuasca Conference precisely to “create internal debate in the territories, because it is not simple, it is not the opinion of a shaman that will answer for this.” There are peoples who advocate exclusive internal use, others who see sharing as a political strategy, and still others who are experimenting with hybrid forms.
Reducing this complexity to “cultural appropriation is always bad” or “Indigenous peoples are being exploited” takes away the agency of these peoples, as if they were incapable of making strategic choices. But recognizing agency does not mean ignoring structural inequalities. It is one thing for a shaman to choose to share knowledge at a festival organized by his community. It is quite another for an urban facilitator who learned at a weekend workshop to now charge for retreats using Indigenous terminology and songs without authorization or recognition.
The Market and Its Paradoxes
Journalist and Alto Santo member Altino Machado described automated factories producing ayahuasca on an industrial scale, exporting it in gel form disguised as açaí, and massive advertising on social media. “There are three recognized factories in Cruzeiro do Sul alone,” he reported. “Entities that do not have a CNPJ, do not have a name, do not have members, but have the structure to produce in large quantities.”
CONAD’s/ Resolution 1/2010 establishes ambiguous boundaries. It prohibits commercialization and tourism, but allows groups to hold legitimate religious events and exchanges, as long as they are non-profit. At the same time, it warns that these loopholes should not be used to disguise the commercialization of ayahuasca under the guise of faith.
There is a growing concern over the lucrative, asymmetrical, and globalized side of ayahuasca, reflected in expansion of the international circuits of New Age therapies, “shamanic” workshops, and “healing” retreats that charge three, four, or five thousand dollars per participant.
Paradoxically, it is Indigenous peoples that face the greatest regulatory constraints. Indigenous leaders are approached on roads, have to justify the transport of their medicine, and face the risk of seizure. Meanwhile, retreats operate with wide visibility on social media, often without equivalent scrutiny.
When the CONAD Resolution was enacted, urban and Indigenous uses were far less widespread than they are today. Bia Labate, who served as a consultant during the regulatory process, recommended that the government invite Indigenous representatives to participate. However, the government rejected her recommendation, saying Indigenous uses remained isolated in villages and that they had their own legal rules and dynamics, and their affairs should not be part of the scope of the working group. (Labate 2025, personal communication). Twenty years later, amid the growing presence and protagonism of Indigenous peoples in public debate and in urban ayahuasca scenes in Brazil and internationally, this regulatory model appears ill-equipped to address Indigenous demands and agendas.
Discover the Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative of the Americas
Who Has Authority?
What this hearing revealed is the profound disconnect between Indigenous practices and conceptions and the regulatory, legal, and commercial model that governs globalized ayahuasca. On one side are peoples who conceive of the drink as medicine, spirit, and cosmological technology. On the other is a state apparatus trained to recognize only “religion,” “tax ID numbers,” and “churches.”
As Henrique Antunes observed, “ayahuasca resists classification. It is medicine, it is culture, it is spirituality, it is religion, it is a way of life, it is a political instrument.” For the shaman Penalva, it is the medicine that cured his cancer, hepatitis, and gastritis. “I consider ayahuasca to be my doctor. The doctor of doctors,” he said. This is not a religious metaphor, it is therapeutic epistemology.
The right of Indigenous peoples to carry, prepare, and circulate their medicines does not derive from a recent normative concession, but from an ontological and legal precedence that predates both the churches and the Constitution itself.
“ILO Convention 169 requires free, prior, and informed consultation with Indigenous peoples. This has not been done properly.”
Fernanda Kaingang
Fernanda Kaingang, from Funai, was emphatic: “ILO Convention 169 requires free, prior, and informed consultation with Indigenous peoples. This has not been done properly.” For 17 years, IPHAN has been dragging out the process of recognizing ayahuasca as intangible heritage specifically because “consultation with Indigenous peoples has not been properly carried out,” explained Diana Giannotti, coordinator of IPHAN.
Meanwhile, Fernanda Kaingang publicly denounced patent applications on ayahuasca, emphasizing that corporate actors seek to privatize ancient collective knowledge without consultation or benefit-sharing. “Who is consulted? Who receives benefits? No one.”
Possible Paths
Federal judge Jair Fagundes proposed a technical solution: remove ayahuasca from list F2 of ANVISA Resolution 344, moving control from the criminal to the administrative sphere. It is an interesting proposal that would resolve immediate constraints, but it does not resolve the underlying issue: recognition of Indigenous peoples as legitimate authorities on this knowledge.
This would require: real consultation, not just formalities, respecting the timing and organizational structures of each people; formal recognition as Indigenous cultural heritage with legal consequences; a differentiated protocol that does not require a CNPJ (Corporate Taxpayer ID) or modern structure; and fair distribution of benefits when Indigenous knowledge generates profit.
But beware: all this could turn into a new layer of bureaucracy that hinders more than it helps. As Henrique Antunes warns: “We can’t just take our boxes, our categories, our rules, and impose the same model. We have to be sensitive enough to understand that what works for us will not necessarily be the best way for them.”
The Crossroads
What is at stake is not just the regulation of a drink, but the future of Indigenous peoples. Ayahuasca has already left the forest; it is already globalized. The question is: will this process continue to be colonization—ancestral knowledge becoming a commodity, Indigenous peoples rendered invisible? We must be aware of the complexities and resist the temptation of simple solutions. Let’s wait for the next chapters.
Art by Mulinga.
