For centuries, Shipibo-Konibo Maestras — the master healers and curanderas of the Peruvian Amazon Basin — have cultivated a profound and systematic relationship with ayahuasca and allied Master Plants. To the Shipibo, ayahuasca is not simply a medicine. It is a sentient plant-being, endowed with consciousness, spirit, and agency, whose teachings form the foundation of an epistemological tradition as sophisticated as any in the history of human thought. This tradition encompasses the practice of icaros — sacred healing songs transmitted through plant dieta — and a comprehensive cosmovision that offers its own philosophy of illness, dying, and what lies beyond. Yet this tradition remains largely undocumented on its own terms, and the Maestra as healer, philosopher, and theorist of consciousness remains largely unrecognized in academic discourse.

In collaboration with the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University, The Coe Lab is engaged in a landmark interdisciplinary research initiative to characterize and document the epistemological frameworks of Shipibo Maestras, with particular attention to how plant medicine is understood and mobilized in the contexts of serious illness and end-of-life care. Where Western biomedical discourse frames ayahuasca through the lens of psychedelic-assisted therapy and dying as a clinical problem to be solved, this research centers the shamanic perspective — positioning the Shipibo Maestra as a healer, philosopher, and theorist of consciousness whose knowledge merits rigorous scholarly attention. The project draws on symmetrical anthropology, medical anthropology, ethnoboiology, and palliative care research to develop an epistemological mapping framework that honors Shipibo knowledge as a legitimate intellectual tradition, not merely an ethnographic curiosity.

A central commitment of this project is reciprocity. In partnership with Shipibo-Konibo communities in the Ucayali region, the team is developing a bilingual Reciprocal Knowledge Archive — a Shipibo/Spanish record of the knowledge shared by Maestra participants, designed with and returned to the communities who generate it. This commitment to reciprocity extends beyond documentation. Through the Coe Lab's ongoing collaboration with Shipibo partners in the Ucayali region, this project directly supports Axeti Nete Koshi Tapon (Strong Root Apprenticeship) — a two-month immersive intergenerational program in which Shipibo-Konibo elders and master healers transmit medicinal plant knowledge, traditional land stewardship practices, ancestral songs, and cultural ways of knowing directly to Shipibo youth from their own communities. Where the Archive helps to ensure that Maestra knowledge is preserved and returned to those who hold it, supporting Koshi Tapon helps to ensure that this knowledge remains alive — actively cultivated, practiced, and carried forward by the next generation of Shipibo cultural guardians and stewarded for those who come after them. Together, these initiatives reflect a model of research reciprocity in which documentation and living cultural transmission are understood as inseparable. The Coe Lab's long-standing relationships with Shipibo-Konibo communities, built over more than a decade of collaborative fieldwork, serve as the foundation and practical gateway for this project. The project is currently in its preliminary phase (2026–2027), encompassing structured literature review, methodological refinement, IRB and ethical governance planning, and early design of the Archive — laying the groundwork for fieldwork that will be conducted in close collaboration with the Shipibo partners whose knowledge and wisdom are at the heart of this inquiry.