This final elaboration focuses on the analysis of the ethnographic research of Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff carried out among the Tukano del Vaupés. In particular, it is proposed to deepen the relations that Tukano have with the forestry environment. The first chapter is introduced by the figure of Reichel-Dolmatoff, with reference to its Nazi past. The geographical environmental characteristics of Vaupés and the characteristics of the Tukan community are illustrated. The myth of desana creation is treated with homonymous cosmology. Gerardo Reichel Dolmatoff was born in Salzburg in 1912 and died in Bogota in 1994. He studies at Kremsmünster, Monaco and Paris, and then emigrate to Colombia in 1939. He works for Texas Petroleum as a paleontologist there; then he is hired by the Etnólogicalo Nacional Institute as an ethnologist and archaeologist. From this moment on, Reichel-Dolmatoff begins to carry out ethnographic and archaeological research throughout Colombia, which leads him to interest in the Tukano native. These are a population allocated to Vaupés, central region of the Northwest Amazon Colombian. The Tukano are a group of speaking exogamic fratries different dialects but shared by the knowledge of a common language, the Tukano. They live on horticulture, hunting, fishing and collecting. These activities must be managed in an ocular manner so that the carrying capacity of forest ecosystems is not exceeded. It is indicative that Reichel Dolmatoff gives great importance to Tukano mythology for understanding of cosmology. Mytical events have left indelible traces in the world: rapid, waterfalls, rock hills, marks on the rocks. These places are still working and still the characters of the myth. Knowing mythology means learning to move in the sensitive world, to relate in a respectful way to the universe. Many aspects of the Tukano action would be completely incomprehensible to the external observer if he were not informed of their mythological tradition. In the second chapter, the central part of the elaboration, the strategies developed by the Tukano to coexist with their environment: black-water ecosystems. Vaupés is traveled by rivers whose waters are very poor of nutrients (blackwater rivers), which means the growth of unconstructable vegetation and less faunistic density. The Tukano have had to develop appropriate strategies to survive in these environments, such as a strict demographic rate control. The limitation of births is entrusted by women to the use of vegetable contraceptives, male to a complex system of sexual restrictions. These sexual restrictions are linked to various areas of life of the Tukano, particularly hunting, and to hunt a man must pursue sexual abstinence. A man can only take animals from the forest if he can control his procreational potential. This has two consequences: the decrease in opportunities where a man can kill animals and the decrease of opportunities where a man can potentially procreate a child. Both these facts are adaptive to a poor environment of faunistic resources, which can meet the food needs of a limited number of people. Such adaptive behaviour is regulated by a traceable regulatory code in Tukano mythology. Cultural rules are transmitted by generation to generation by oral means: the figure that is watching this process is shaman. The Payé (shaman) is a central figure of Tukano society, he is responsible for mediating between the natural and supernatural world. In the supernatural world, the beings of the people who have perfect and immutable wisdom are the beings of the myth. Their wisdom is necessary for men to live. The shaman, through induction of altered states of consciousness, can make contact with these entities, and make a part of their knowledge. The payé also administers the collective rite of the yajé, the moment of life of the Tukano community, where adult males hire a macerato of Banisteriopsis caapi to relive mythological events, such as the early stages of the creation of the world. Many aspects of the Tukano action would be completely incomprehensible to the external observer if he were not informed of their mythological tradition. In the second chapter, the central part of the elaboration, the strategies developed by the Tukano to coexist with their environment: black-water ecosystems. Vaupés is traveled by rivers whose waters are very poor of nutrients (blackwater rivers), which means the growth of unconstructable vegetation and less faunistic density. The Tukano have had to develop appropriate strategies to survive in these environments, such as a strict demographic rate control. The limitation of births is entrusted by women to the use of vegetable contraceptives, male to a complex system of sexual restrictions. These sexual restrictions are linked to various areas of life of the Tukano, in particular hunting activities: in order to hunt a man must perform sexual abstinence. A man can only take animals from the forest if he can control his procreational potential. This has two consequences: the decrease in opportunities where a man can kill animals and the decrease of opportunities where a man can potentially procreate a child. Both these facts are adaptive to a poor environment of faunistic resources, which can meet the food needs of a limited number of people. Such adaptive behaviour is regulated by a traceable regulatory code in Tukano mythology. Cultural rules are transmitted by generation to generation by oral means: the figure that is watching this process is shaman. The Payé (shaman) is a central figure of Tukano society, he is responsible for mediating between the natural and supernatural world. In the supernatural world, the beings of the people who have perfect and immutable wisdom are the beings of the myth. Their wisdom is necessary for men to live. The shaman, through induction of altered states of consciousness, can make contact with these entities, and make a part of their knowledge. The payé also administers the collective rite of the yajé, the moment of life of the Tukano community, where adult males hire a macerato of Banisteriopsis caapi to relive mythological events, such as the early stages of the creation of the world. The Yajé rite is therefore an essential instrument for the conservation and transmission of Tukan cultural heritage. The third chapter analyses the “global” dissemination of Banisteriopsis caapi preparations. The treatment of this phenomenon is useful to reflect on the western approach to shamanism and the dissemination of shamanic practices in the West. The shaman's figure was subject to different interpretations during history by the Western. The first Christian reporters of America focused on the witchcraft aspects of shamanism, while eighty-centuries colonialism focused on the psychopathological aspects of shamanic practices. Based on the current idealisation of the shaman's figure, there would be European Romanticism and American Transcendalism. People like Emerson and Thoreau, acting on dichotomy between nature and culture, would have made the nostalgic feeling towards a “primitive” way of living among the wild populations. The idea of shamanism as an archaic religion, representing a genuine natural philosophy would have originated from these anti-modernist feelings. Interest in shamanism, which was understood in the latter, has spread widely in the West since the 1960s. The Western have integrated shamanic practices into their culture, such as induction of altered states of consciousness for spiritual and therapeutic purposes. One of the most common methods for induction of ASC (Altered State of Consciousness) is the use of psychoactive substances. The objective of these practices is, in general, to achieve greater awareness of their self, necessary for the resolution of inner dilemmas which generate anxiety and frustrations. Indeed, the use of ayahuasca and other hallucinogenic substances prevails for introspection: their effectiveness in psychotherapeutic field is proven and still under research. However, this type of experience, defined as “spiritual”, may be difficult to assimilate and generate emotional trauma, whose resolution requires specialised staff to intervene. This is one of the reasons why the so-called “ayahuasca tourism”, which sees Western individuals traveling to the Amazon to participate in shamanic rites, is particularly controversial. The analysis of this phenomenon is useful for critical consideration of how anthropologists have approached the study of the Amazon’s indigenous communities. Native peoples have proved very skilled in changing their shamanic traditions to adapt them to the demands of the metics community and Western visitors, allowing their own shamanism not to disappear. These communities are open to the outside world, as well as their culture is dynamic and adaptable to new needs. This does not arise from Reichel Dolmatoff’s ethnography. He presents the Tukano as a population with a static culture, not subject to special mutations over time. The research carried out by Esther Jean Langdon, who has also taken an interest in Siona, a tukano fraria, can be known about the socio-cultural changes which have affected these peoples over the last decades. The study of shamanism should therefore not be limited to recovery ethnography, but should be carried out in awareness of fluidity and simultaneous phenomenon.