Song to Huanduj Flower Man
Ritual songs in the Ecuadorian Amazon are intimate, sensorial encounters between Runa people and their plant kin. One such song, titled “Huanduj Flower Man,” is a love song performed by Indigenous Runa women to the Brugmansia suaveolens tree, which is a source of both physical and spiritual medicine. Its leaves and flowers are used to treat wounds, the stem is prepared to induce visions, and the plant plays a role in cleansing rituals. It is also planted for protection against harmful spiritual forces in the rainforest. This commentary is based on the work of anthropologist Todd Swanson, who has lived and worked with Runa communities in Ecuador.
For the Runa, as for other Amazonian Indigenous peoples, plants are regarded as relatives and/or teachers who must be approached with humility, gratitude, and a sense of reciprocity.[1] In some cases, this approach is accompanied by yearning, as if to estranged lovers. By performing these songs, the Runa maintain their relationships with plants through what might be called “affective reciprocity”: a relational mode where care, attention, and gifts in the form of songs are offered in the hopes of bridging the estrangement between species.
These songs, expressed through themes of longing and emotional turmoil, embody an Indigenous ontology in which plants are not inert objects but former human relatives—estranged lovers, lost children—whose current botanical form is the outcome of a profound physical and moral transformation.[2] In the Runa cosmovision, the transformation of plants from human beings into flora is understood not metaphorically but ontologically: plants are people with histories. Their plant state is the consequence of specific relational dynamics and moral infractions—often referred to as quillas in Quichua—that disrupted human social life and led to their estrangement from their community.
In the song, a Runa woman, Clara Santi, recounts her transformation into a Huanduj Flower Woman in order to engage with and allure the Huanduj Flower Man (Brugmansia suaveolens). This flirtatious and embodied journey reveals how she experiences the encounter sensorially, while also acknowledging the danger it poses; it is a relationship that could potentially lead to her death.[3] The song is particularly striking for its ability to capture the emotional intensity of human-plant kinship. The tree is not only addressed as a being with feelings but also as one with agency and selfhood, capable of withdrawal.[4] Through the song, Runa women seek to gather medicine from various parts of the tree in the form of a poultice for wounds, for limpias (ritual cleansing), or to be ingested and induce visions. However, the efficacy of the medicine depends on the love and sensual relationship the Runa woman develops through her song.
Source
The following song was transcribed and published by the anthropologist Tod D. Swanson in “Singing to Estranged Lovers: Runa Relations to Plants in the Ecuadorian Amazon.” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 3, no. 1 (2009): 36–65.
Little Huanduj Flower Woman
Little Huanduj Flower Woman
Huanduj Spirit Man
Taking (her) from right here
Placing her on the point of the island
Where he is flowering.
I am the woman who stands smelling.
Giving off perfume with just his flower
When she arrives where he is standing
The Huanduj Man bathes her with his flower
I am the woman just standing here
Wherever he wants to take her
In the house
On an island in the Napo
The Huanduj Man, standing
Called (me) from here
Standing at the head of the island
The Huanduj Flower Man.
He wanted to take [me]
But he was not able to overcome me
He will not be able to overcome me.
With only his flower.
Smelling, asking
I stand making him drunk Huanduj Spirit Man I stood making him give off his smell
The Huanduj Flower Woman
The Huanduj Flower Woman
I stand turning back and forth (ambivalent)
I stand turning back and forth (ambivalent)
He himself
The Huanduj Flower Man
He thought he could just take me
He will not take me
He himself secretly with his huanduj flower stem
I am the woman who stands making herself heard
Bathing with his huanduj
I am the traveling woman who looks into his eyes when he stands there wearing his hat.
He stands wanting to take me
The Napo River Huanduj
Stands wanting to take me
He stands wanting to take me to put me on the point of his island.
He wants to take me
The Huanduj Spirit Man
Stands [there] intending to take me
Wearing his hat
The huanduj flower opened
With only his smell
I am the woman who stands smelling
The Huanduj Spirit man
Laughs (flirts) wanting to take me
He won’t be able to overcome me
The strong Santi woman
Only his eyes/face
I am the woman who stands turning back and forth
I am the woman who stands taking his huanduj hat
Looking into my eyes
He sweeps with only his huanduj
The standing man
He laughs wanting to carry me away
I couldn’t do it
(Swanson 2009, p. 43).
Footnotes
[1] Luis Eduardo Luna, Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1986); Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013); Julie Soleil Archambault, “Taking Love Seriously in Human-Plant Relations in Mozambique: Toward an Anthropology of Affective Encounters,” Cultural Anthropology 31, no. 2 (2016): 244–71.
[2] Tod D. Swanson, “Singing to Estranged Lovers: Runa Relations to Plants in the Ecuadorian Amazon,” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 3, no. 1 (2009): 36–65.
[3] Swanson, “Singing to Estranged Lovers,” 44.
[4] Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013); Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, “Exchanging Perspectives: The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies,” Common Knowledge 10, no. 3 (2004): 463–84.
Bibliography
Archambault, Julie Soleil. “Taking Love Seriously in Human-Plant Relations in Mozambique: Toward an Anthropology of Affective Encounters.” Cultural Anthropology 31, no. 2 (2016): 244–71.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013.
Kohn, Eduardo. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
Luna, Luis Eduardo. Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1986.
Swanson, Tod D. “Singing to Estranged Lovers: Runa Relations to Plants in the Ecuadorian Amazon.” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 3, no. 1 (2009): 36–65.
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. “Exchanging Perspectives: The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies.” Common Knowledge 10, no. 3 (2004): 463–84.
Paola Andrea Sánchez-Castañeda
Paola Andrea Sánchez-Castañeda is a cultural anthropologist working in the fields of critical Indigenous studies and urban environmental studies, particularly in Latin America. Her research focuses on the ontological dimensions of indigeneity, territory, nature, and the sacred among the Muysca of Suba, an urban Indigenous community located in Bogotá, Colombia, with whom she has collaborated for more than eight years.
Sánchez-Castañeda earned her PhD in Global and Sociocultural Studies, with a concentration in anthropology, and her MA in Religious Studies from Florida International University. She served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Religion and Indigenous Plant Medicine Traditions of the Americas at the Center for the Study of World Religions from 2024 to 2025. During her fellowship, she worked collaboratively with the Muysca community to document the use of sacred plant medicines and their vital role in Indigenous revitalization and territorial defense in the city of Bogotá.
She is currently Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University.
