Peru’s Ministry of Culture announced that it would investigate reports of the deaths of traditional Shawi healers in the northern Peruvian region of Alto Amazonas and persistently high rates of hepatitis B among Candoshi and Shapra communities in that region recently.
At a press conference on October 3, Vicente Otta, vice minister for intercultural affairs, said the two problems “have not been addressed as urgently as they deserved.”

Richard Joaquin was born in 1946 into the Gila River Indian Community, one of four federally recognized tribes of the Tohono O’odham Indian Community (Salt River, Ak-Chin and the Tohono O’odham Nation are the other three.) At one time, the Tohono O’odham community covered a large portion of the southwestern region of the United States and northern parts of Mexico.

Peru’s government said Tuesday that 14 shamans in the country’s north-eastern jungle region of Loreto have been murdered in the past 20 months, newspaper La Republica reported.
Deputy Intercultural Minister Vicente Otta Rivera said the murders occurred in the Balsa Puerto district, near Yurimaguas in the Alto Amazonas province.

A lock of hair has helped scientists to piece together the genome of Australian Aborigines and rewrite the history of human dispersal around the world.
DNA from the hair demonstrates that indigenous Aboriginal Australians were the first to separate from other modern humans, around 70,000 years ago.

It’s fair time — After showing your livestock it’s unusual food time — mostly fried, like Twinkies and funnel cakes. A newie lately is bacon dipped in chocolate.
Still, the one food that most of us have at the fair (as well as at home) is — corn on the cob covered with melted butter and whatever else is available.