THE LINEAGE AND VISION BEHIND ONIKANO
Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, the Shipibo-Conibo people of the Ucayali Basin have long been regarded as the guardians of the purest and most powerful secrets of Amazonian shamanism — a tradition preserved not in writing, but through direct experience, discipline and years of rigorous apprenticeship.
Rather like Yale or Harvard, it has been the custom for countless generations amongst other tribes from across the Western Amazon to send their would-be shamans to complete their arduous apprenticeship under the guidance of a Shipibo maestro curandero.
This is the lineage from which Onikano emerges.
Its founder, Niwen Koshi — known outside the tradition as Maestro Heberto García — numbers amongst his forebears an extraordinary number of onanyas (master healers) and merayas. Within the Shipibo tradition, the meraya represents the ninth and highest level of shamanic mastery: a figure said to be capable of becoming invisible, or of shape-shifting into the jaguar and other animals of the forest.
Whether any merayas exist today remains unknown. It is widely believed that Yosi Ocha — Heberto’s maternal grandfather, and his earliest teacher — was the last.
YOSI OCHA — THE LAST OF THE SHIPIBO MERAYAS
Yosi Ocha (Spanish name, Guillermo Ramírez) was known to the world as a public figure. What he carried in secret, almost no one knew.
Publicly, he was known for his political and educational work, collaborating with many national and international bodies such as the Peruvian National Institute of Culture (INC) and UNESCO. He dedicated himself to improving relations between the indigenous tribespeople of the Amazon and their mestizo (mixed-race) overlords, tirelessly advocating territorial rights, the preservation of the Shipibo language and bilingual education for all.
The passion and commitment he brought to this work are all the more remarkable as, in his youth, Yosi Ocha was treated little better than a slave, and on occasion as cannon fodder, by one of the last of the white rubber barons. It is hardly surprising then, that the full majesty of his shamanic powers was a closely guarded secret outside his small local community.
The family had always known him as a curandero. What none of them knew was the depth of the knowledge and power he was holding in silence. Whilst Yosi Ocha had been a prolific, published writer on cultural, political and educational topics, no one suspected that at the same time, he had been painstakingly recording comprehensive details of shamanic rituals and procedures known only to the merayas.
The death of Yosi Ocha in 2006 was a profound loss for Heberto — his grandfather had been the defining presence of his youth, and his earliest mentor. Among the few things left to him was his grandfather’s cushma (the traditional garment of a curandero). It was only months later that he discovered that inside it, carefully wrapped, were his grandfather’s notes.
These manuscripts were to be his legacy to his grandson.
THE BIRTH OF ONIKANO
Heberto’s training began when he was barely two years old. Under the guidance of Yosi Ocha and master healers from several Amazonian traditions, his path was shaped by decades of discipline, sacrifice and rigorous training.
From 2000, he began offering shamanic retreats and, in a few special cases, shamanic training at his family’s jungle lodge. Yet even then, the full weight of his path had not yet fully revealed itself. It was only with the discovery of his grandfather’s manuscripts that Heberto understood the scope of what he had inherited — and the responsibility that came with it.
In 2014, he formally established the centre — initially under the name Yosi Ocha, in honour of his grandfather. At a time when the world was already receiving warnings — channelled through ceremony from the spirits of eighteenth-century Amazonian shamans — about the dangers of ‘Ayahuasca tourism’, the preservation of an authentic lineage was not simply a personal mission. It was a responsibility larger than any one person.
In 2024, a new cycle began: the centre took a new name, Onikano.
Today, the work at Onikano follows the principles of the Shipibo lineage from which it originates. The space is held in a way that allows people from outside the tradition to enter it respectfully, without dilution or loss of its depth.
This lineage existed long before Onikano. Onikano exists so that it doesn’t disappear.
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