About Tatiana Aya Tupinambá
Tatiana Aya Tupinambá is an Indigenous Tupinambá woman. She is a curandera in the Ashaninka lineage of Peru, and she also studies in the Yawanawá lineage of Brazil. She trained for ten years under Maestro Juan Salazar Flores in Peru, before he passed on, at his center on the banks of the sacred boiling river, Shanay-Timpishka. She carries the medicine with the seriousness of someone who was called to it, and grounds every ceremony in lineage, intention, and the wellbeing of each person in the circle. Her ceremonial name, Aya, means little bird in Yawanawá. It was given to her by the tribe.
Curandera: the documentary
Curandera is a documentary directed by Alexia Kraft de la Saulx, filmed in the Peruvian Amazon over several years. It follows Tatiana Aya Tupinambá and the people who come to work with her, and captures ceremony, healing, and the particular quality of attention the medicine demands. The film does not explain the medicine; it witnesses it.
Seen by over 1.9 million people and winner of multiple film festival awards.
The space's story
Tekoha sits on preserved land deep in the Atlantic rainforest, surrounded by national park. The people here have lived on this ground for many generations, caring for the land and the trees rather than clearing them. That is why trees more than five hundred years old still stand along the paths.
