Nimairama
uitoto (murui-muinanɨ)
The Uitoto word that names not “the shaman” nor “the sage,” but the *summit* of a hierarchy of knowledge. In the cosmovision reported by Virgilio López Flores (Finoratoɨ), healers (*curanderos*) and sorcerers are “under the orders of the *nimairama*”: he is the master of *all* knowledge. But his defining trait is not to be full of knowledge—it is to be inhabited. When he withdraws into himself, “the masters who dwell in space take possession of his body.” These masters are the dead: the souls of former *nimairama* ascend into space, where the sun Jusiñamui has destined them, and from there descend again into the living who concentrates. To know, for the *nimairama*, is thus not to accumulate within oneself a treasure of information, but to become the passage for a lineage of dead masters who still think through him. The highest knower is the most dispossessed. To be distinguished from the *meraya* Shipibo, another pinnacle of knowledge, but the inverse: the *meraya* *leaves* his body to traverse all worlds, while the *nimairama* remains motionless and lets the other worlds enter into him.
Cuando el nimairama se concentra, los maestros que están en el espacio se posesionan de su cuerpo.
One might translate nimairama as “shaman,” but in doing so, one would confuse the master with his subordinates. For among the Uitoto of the Putumayo—those spoken of by Virgilio López Flores, Finoratoɨ, “the bird that solves all problems”—those who heal and those who strike, curanderos and sorcerers, all “answer to the nimairama.” He stands above them: the master of all knowledge.
One might imagine him fulfilled, the keeper of a wisdom a lifetime has gathered. López describes him otherwise. When the nimairama withdraws into himself, the masters in the space take possession of his body. The greatest scholar is not the one who holds knowledge—it is the one others come to inhabit. To concentrate is not to sift through memory: it is to empty oneself enough for the masters to enter.
And these masters are the dead. The souls of past nimairama ascend into space, where the sun Jusiñamui has destined them; from there, they descend again into the living who withdraws. To know, for the nimairama, is to become the passage of a lineage: the point where yesterday’s scholars return to think. He is not wise because he knows, but because through him, others still know.
This is where nimairama defies our words. “Knowledge,” for us, implies accumulation: a constituted expertise, a capital of learning that is mine. The wisest is the most filled. The nimairama inverts the measure—the highest scholar is the most dispossessed, whose body is no longer entirely his own. And he differs from the Shipibo meraya, another pinnacle of wisdom: the meraya departs, traversing all worlds alive by transforming into a jaguar or a boa; the nimairama, motionless, lets the worlds enter into him. One knows by crossing the body’s boundaries; the other, by opening his body to those who have already crossed them.