The Multiversity Bakish Mai is a non-profit foundation, in accordance with Article 99 of the Peruvian Civil Code, whose mission is to promote and preserve the creative ways of life of the Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo people of the Peruvian Amazon. It focuses on three interconnected areas of teaching and development: art, plants, and territory.

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The Multiversity was born from an initiative by the Shipibo Conibo Center of New York, made possible through the donation of land that previously housed the tourist lodge known as Ani Nii Shobo. This 35-hectare space is located in front of the Shansho Cocha lagoon, near the community of San Francisco de Yarinacocha, within a beautiful ecological reserve.

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Instead of being a centre for spiritual tourism and ayahuasca consumption for individual health, the Multiversity Bakish Mai is oriented towards the collective well-being of Indigenous peoples and the Amazonian territory. It offers an intergenerational space for exploration and experimentation, aimed at preserving, reinventing, and transmitting the knowledge, ethics, and practices of the Shipibo people. It also serves Indigenous organisations as a place to facilitate meetings and collaborations.

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The concept of "multiversity," as opposed to "university," evokes the idea of a multi-layered reality, characteristic of the Shipibo worldview and its spiritual understanding of ecology.

The term "bakish," which in Shipibo means both "yesterday" and "tomorrow," refers to ancestral values as a necessary source of inspiration for the Indigenous future: a collective, free, autonomous, healthy, and sustainable future, driven by principles of reciprocity, guided by an ecological policy of regeneration and coexistence with nature and the beings that inhabit the forest and water, promoting the creative and free development of Amazonian-Indigenous imagination.

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The Multiversity Bakish Mai is led by an expandable council of Shipibo leaders, including Cecilia Brito, Sara Flores, Carla López, Elisa Vargas, Wihtner Fago, Lener Guimaraes, Walter López, and Daniel Maynas.

The activities of the Multiversity Bakish Mai are funded through international grants and partnerships, including a unique collaboration with the Shipibo Conibo Center and its represented artists: Sara Flores, Celia Vásquez Yui, Diana Ruiz, Deysi, and Pilar Ramírez. To them, as well as to the founders of Ani Nii Shobo, Roger López, Andrés Selame, and Santiago Correa, the teams of the Multiversity Bakish Mai and the Shipibo Conibo Center express their infinite gratitude.

 

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