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In the heart of the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest lies the community of the Indigenous Ikitu people. Nature and Culture International has established a longstanding relationship with this community located east of the capital city of Loreto, Iquitos. Recently, Milton López, a local communicator for Nature and Culture, journeyed to speak with Marcelo Inuma, the great-grandson of the last chief of the Ikitu people.  

According to Peru’s Ministry of Culture, there are just 693 Indigenous Ikitu individuals left in all of Peru. An elder from the Ikitu community lamented that since the passing of their last Kuraka, or chief, in 1940s, the Ikitu have gradually lost touch with their identity and traditional customs due to the encroachment of loggers and land traffickers. Today, they are striving to reclaim their heritage through the strengthening of local organizations and community governance. Nature and Culture International is backing their initiative to revitalize their culture. 

While gathering the last irapay leaves for the new hut that will house an Ikitu statue, Marcelo Inuma, an elder from the San Antonio de Pintuyacu Native Community shares, “I am of Ikitu descent; my great-grandfather was Súkani. He was a very powerful man. Invincible.” The sculpture has been part of the community since 1987, but it was abandoned and began deteriorating due to exposure from the elements. Building a hut for the sculpture marks the beginning of a series of activities through which the Ikitu people are striving to reclaim their Indigenous identity in San Antonio. 

Preserving cultural heritage for indigenous communities is integral to our conservation efforts. It is essential for building community resilience to encroaching extractive activities and the effects of climate change. It helps to sustain biodiversity, maintain ecological balance, and promote sustainable resource management because Indigenous communities possess traditional knowledge and practices that have been developed over generations for living in harmony with their natural environment. 

The Ikitu and a colonialist past 

Marcelo Inuma recalls his ancestry as the great-grandson of the last kuraka of the Amazonian Indigenous Ikitu people. According to the Ministry of Culture’s Indigenous Peoples Database, the Ikitu inhabited the Nanay, Pintuyacu, and Chambira river basins in the Loreto region for centuries. However, in the 17th and 18th centuries, Jesuit missionaries forced them to evangelize. Between 1740 and 1767, their populations were consolidated into eight designated settlements or missions. One of these concentrated settlements was San Pablo del Napeano, later known as the Settlement of the Ikitu, which eventually lent its name to the present-day capital of Loreto, Iquitos. 

In 2022, Nature and Culture backed the development of a bilingual graphic novel (in Spanish and Ikitu) titled “The Last Kuraka.” The comic tells the tale of Súkani, the renowned leader of the Ikitu people who was captured by colonial traffickers aiming to take control of their land. 

A cultural revival of the Ikitu  

“We planned to build this hut as a community. The statue of César Paico is already here; we had it, but it was abandoned. Now that the hut is built, we are going to place the statue beneath it, for everyone to see. Here, people can also rest, this little shelter is going to have all the comforts for our community,” adds Marcelo Inuma, who was also a community leader or “apu” of San Antonio, situated in the Pintuyacu basin.  

Confronted with the loss of their ancestral knowledge, the elders and leaders of the Ikitu community in San Antonio, along with their political representatives, decided to form a Culture Committee. Marcelo Inuma is a member of this committee, tasked with the important responsibility of gathering and preserving songs and cultural artifacts. In doing so, he plays a role in revitalizing the rich cultural legacy passed down by his great-grandfather, Súkani. 

Other members of the committee include Inés Pacaya Inuma (Historian); Silvia Díaz Saboya (Dance and Traditional Clothing); and Nelson Pacaya Inuma (Bilingual Hand-Lettering Specialist). 

Nature and Culture collaborated with the Culture Committee to create a comprehensive plan aimed at reclaiming Ikitu culture and reinvigorating the use of their language. This plan includes various strategies to ensure that the entire community embraces the Ikitu language and culture once more. These strategies involve organizing instructional workshops, providing bilingual teachers and Ikitu learning materials to the community’s children to help them become proficient in their native language, and broadcasting radio programs about their people to raise awareness of their cultural significance among the population of Loreto. 

In the long journey of recovering Ikitu knowledge in San Antonio, the responsibility falls not only on the Culture Committee but also on the entire community. For example, another advocate for Ikitu culture is César Paico Llona, who, at 17 years old, served as the model for the very sculpture now housed in the hut. Crafted by artist Felipe Lettersten in 1987, the sculpture symbolizes the community’s dedication to preserving their heritage. 

Ancestral knowledge for future generations 

Despite being one of the most recognized Indigenous groups in the Peruvian Amazon, the Ikitu population is still among the most vulnerable and least populous. The situation is compounded by the fact that very few people speak their language. According to a national census from 2017, only 519 individuals reported speaking the Ikitu language. 

However, this was not always the case. In the year the Ikitu statue was built, the situation was different. “We’re talking about 1987. More people spoke Ikitu back then. San Antonio was much smaller, the area behind it was not inhabited, and the main port that exists today did not exist, nor did the staircases; they were elsewhere. It was common knowledge that there was a statue and that it was tucked away. Originally, I personally erected it to be at the port,” recalls César Paico. 

On October 12th of last year, Nature and Culture supported the Fourth Amazonian Ancestral Knowledge Gathering in Iquitos, an event that brought together elders from seven Indigenous Peoples of Loreto. At this gathering, Marcelo Inuma and his niece Margarita Beuzeville were present and the Ikitu elder shared his story: “I come from a mother who spoke Ikitu and understood Spanish, and grandparents who spoke Ikitu exclusively. My grandfather never spoke Spanish. I was raised speaking the language and using natural medicines with them. No one was ever lacking during their “minga” (collective work). Everyone shared.” 

Currently, in the Ikitu village, only two wise men are recognized by the Peruvian state. “But they are already old; they are over 70 years old. I am left as the only wise man and interpreter-translator of this language. I write, speak, translate. What we want is to revitalize all these customs we had before, and for me not to be alone,” concludes the wise Marcelo Inuma. 

Communal authorities and Ikitu wise men hope that with the realization of the various mentioned activities such as teaching Indigenous culture and language, the production of bilingual materials, and the revitalization of the language through radio transmission, Peru and the world will learn about the existence and importance of the Ikitu in the past, present, and future of national history. 

Ikíitu Indigenous youth connect to their culture, language and ancestral customs with Nature and Culture’s publication of the comic, “El Último Kuraka.”

Each year on August 9th, people around the world celebrate Indigenous Peoples. It’s an important time to raise awareness around Indigenous autonomy and equal rights to their ancestral lands, native languages, and traditional customs. This year’s theme centers around Indigenous youth who have so much at stake in the struggle to maintain their cultural identity. That is why Nature and Culture, together with the Ikíitu people of the Indigenous community, San Antonio, Pintuyacu river, Loreto, Peru, produced and published the comic, “El Último Kuraka,” or “The Last Chief.”

Nature and Culture hopes to raise awareness around the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon by sharing their traditional knowledge.

Alongside our efforts to conserve forests, our team provides opportunities to strengthen the Indigenous identity of the local communities that help keep the forest standing. In this way, forest management is imbued with local understandings and experiences that have persisted for centuries. Written in both Spanish and the Ikíiitu native language, “El Último Kuraka” serves as written documentation of the cultural history of the Peruvian city of Iquitos (named after the Ikíitu people), the capital of the Maynas Province. We hope that this history is not only shared amongst the Ikíitu youth but spread to youth across the region and throughout Peru!

In the comic, hero Súkani, a leader with supernatural powers, is imprisoned by colonialists attempting to seize his people’s land. This traditional story was adapted by Nature and Culture from collected facts from the oral tradition of the Ikíitu people. During the 17th and 18th centuries, many Ikíitu were forced to join missions and displaced from their ancestral territories. The city of present day Iquitos bears the name of the Ikíitu people, in homage to the first residents of the area, although it is not known exactly when and who settled on the plateau surrounded by the Nanay, Amazon, Itaya and Lake Moronacocha rivers. The true story of the death of “El Última Kuraka”, Alejandro Inuma, in the the 1940s was decisive moment for the Ikíitu people because the language ceased to be used as a primary language and many customs began to be lost. According to data obtained by the Ministry of Culture, it is estimated that today there are only 519 people from the communities of the Ikíitu people remaining.

In the comic’s prologue, Inter-cultual Specialist, Elena Burga Cabrera affirms that “Amazonian Indigenous peoples have their own stories about who they are, where they came from, who were their leaders, how their first contact with ‘mestizos’ went and about the events they have experienced, generally with a lot of violence and suffering, and that has generated changes in their way of life and in the characteristics of the territories they occupy.”

The identity of Indigenous Peoples is attached to the land, language, traditional livelihoods, ceremonies, arts, crafts, and family members and society as a whole. The elders of the Ikíitu community, like Ema Llona Yareja, pictured above, provide a connection between generations, a crucial aspect of Indigenous Peoples’ wellbeing. She asserts, “(children) must learn, so that our language is not lost, from an early age they should receive education in the Ikíitu language”.  In areas of high cultural and economic exchange like the Nanay river basin, Indigenous cultures are at risk of being lost. “The Nanay basin, where the community of San Antonio is located, is subjected to processes of cultural and economic exchange with western society. The pressures riverside communities face create challenges that must be confronted to safeguard the well-being of their families, the forest, water and, above all, the right to stand firm before illegal actions,” says former Nature and Culture Peru Country Director, Patricia Ochoa.

View the full comic here!

The Ikíitu people have a cultural richness, which to this day persists in their daily customs.

Utensils and tools, fishing techniques, knowledge of medicinal plants, knowledge of the forest for hunting, cultivation of their farms are all pieces of knowledge that are preserved in the rich culture of the Ikíitu people. In addition to documenting their native language, the “El Última Kuraka” comic also records some of the customs and artifacts that are used to this day, including garments, pottery and cooking utensils.

Supporting Indigenous communities in conserving nature in their lands requires recognition of their lived experiences and world visions. By documenting the culture and history of the Ikíitu people, we are helping to preserve not only their way of life, but also the sustainable practices that have been passed down through generations. They have been great stewards of their ancestral lands and we are working alongside the elders in the community to ensure future generations will have the same local knowledge and support to continue to protect these sacred places.

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