A Kichwa activist on ayahuasca’s rise – and what it really means to her people

Nina Gualinga is a Kichwa environmental and Indigenous rights activist from Sarayaku, a community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In Waska, the Ecuadorian filmmaker Boloh Miranda and the Kichwa filmmaker Elizabeth Swanson Andi capture Gualinga reflecting on the forms of extractivism and commodification imposed on her people from the world beyond it. This includes their territory, long exploited by oil companies and the Ecuadorian government, and spiritual traditions in the form of hayakwaska (ayahuasca), increasingly marketed to tourists who lack a connection to the sacred traditions surrounding it.

In voiceovers and in conversation with members of her community, Gualinga draws a connection between ancestral and spiritual knowledge and Sarayaku’s long resistance to oil companies, whose incursions threaten both territory and tradition. In doing so, the film reveals the ways in which environmental justice and Indigenous rights struggles are profoundly intertwined, as well as the deep resilience of the Sarayaku people.