For thousands of years shamans have transmitted their knowledge of the tropical rain forest only to carefully selected apprentices through a tapestry of stories, songs and ceremonies that encode a highly-developed mnemonic for preserving their culture. Anthropologists note that shamans have used this deep understanding of their cosmology to steward the forest's ecosystem, contributing technologies to increase biological diversity, a sophisticated soil taxonomy, and extensive knowledge of animal behavior and medicinal plants. It has shaped their society, proven invaluable to sustaining life, and contributed significantly to modern medicine. Miraculously, it has survived the vicissitudes of the Spanish conquest, racial intermixing, and the industrial revolution. Now this profound inheritance is on the verge of extinction through absorption into the encroaching global culture.

Don Ignacio Duri is one of a small and decreasing number of maestro healers entrusted with this legacy of sacred ecological wisdom that forms the backbone of traditional pharmacopoeia in the Amazon. As he prepares for the end of the cycle of his life, he has agreed to open the doors to his world through the stories, myths and Ikaros (power songs) that encode an esoteric and ancient tradition that can not be reduced to a series of techniques, biochemical processes, or list of isolated facts.

The shaman's stories are more than a dialogue among humans. They are a conversation with the natural world, used to constantly renew a reciprocal relationship with the Earth and to invoke entities which, to the Western mind, are insentient or even non-existent. The stories tell of local plant and animal spirits that live in the underwater, forest, and sky realms and creation myths including that of a plant that grew from King Sinchihuyacui's grave. “Out of the king's hair grew a vine which, when combined with the plant that sprouted at his feet, helps people see and acquire deep knowledge dating back to the beginning of time.” These stories contain the power to profoundly affect how we view ourselves and the Earth. They herald richer ways to see our interconnection with all animate and inanimate beings.

Voice of the Amazonian Rain Forest seeks to promote change by raising global awareness, not to suggest that the audience go back in time nor adopt another's oral culture, rather that we remember ourselves, our own stories and our own reciprocal relationship with the natural world that surrounds us. Voice of the Amazonian Rain Forest portrays a unique viewpoint of interconnectedness between the Earth and all of its inhabitants – distinct from a Western way of perceiving the world – that gives us a glimpse of a deeper wisdom about who we really are.