Flavio Santi is an Indigenous Ki-Shuar leader, hereditary shaman, and plant medicine
healer of the Ayuy Yu clan of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Since the 1990s, he has led
an international effort to buy back thousands of acres of jungle in his ancestral
territory. As the founder and director of Escuela Wayusa, he is focused on Indigenous
youth education in his community and establishing an alternative model of
development that empowers Indigenous wisdom-keepers to use their land for cultural
education and traditional healing practices. An international speaker and plant
medicine workshop leader, Flavio has travelled across North America to raise
awareness of the environmental threats facing the Amazon jungle.

The Ayuy Yu Clan of the Ecuadorian Amazon are renowned for protecting sacred sites, traditional medicine teachings, and the essentials of the surrounding ecosystem. But they have suffered greatly for it. Due to their resistance over the last half-century of industrial invasion, their community was targeted by the military and their homes were destroyed. They have been afflicted by military assault, assassination, illegal jailing and interrogation, the division of their community by oil company bribery, and the contamination of their ancestral land by potent petrochemical toxins. Having failed at violent resistance, they are now developing a new model of activism, employing elders and shamans to protect and restore their cultural inheritance. And miraculously, it seems to be working.