WASHINGTON - Environmental and native rights groups on Tuesday accused a U.S. government agency of "bullying" indigenous peoples by backing an American who patented a plant used by Amazon tribes in religious rituals.

Thirty groups, among them the Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote to the Inter-American Foundation, an agency funded by U.S. taxpayers to help indigenous peoples, protesting that it had halted support for Amazon tribes in the dispute over the patent rights.

The dispute began last year after a U.S. citizen took out a patent for ayahuasca, a vine considered sacred by many of the more than 400 indigenous groups in the Amazon basin. Ayahuasca is mixed with other plants to produce a potent hallucinogenic drink used by shamans in religious ceremonies.

At a meeting in Georgetown, Guyana last May, the largest umbrella organization of Amazon tribes, COICA, declared the unnamed American patent-holder (now known to be Loren Miller) "an enemy of the indigenous peoples" and banned him from their lands.

The Foundation viewed that as an attack on a U.S. citizen and demanded retraction. The Amazon natives said their dignity was worth more than the $1.1 million they got in U.S. money. The Foundation cut off its funding.

"The dramatic steps taken by the Foundation against COICA threaten to undermine the many years of investment by numerous organizations and indigenous peoples towards building a voice for the peoples of the Amazon," the groups' letter said.

"The Inter-American Foundation's bullying of indigenous peoples contradicts their mission as a U.S. government agency to support economic development of the poorest sectors in the Americas," said Melina Selverston, director of the Coalition for Amazonian Peoples and their Environment.

The groups urged the U.S. agency to reconsider.

NOW HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS...AYAHUASCA PATENT OVERTURNED!

SpiritQuest
 

All rights reserved, © El Tigre Journeys, 1999-2012