This is a study of how shamans among the Indians of the Sibundoy Valley have resolved the question of external influence. The Sibundoy strategy for cultural survival consists of integrating foreign elements without denying their own beliefs by establishing mediations that match native thought structure, which is based on a movement of complementary opposites. This integration yields a great cultural plasticity, whose fundamental principle achieves a dynamic equilibrium in those institutions, such as shamanism, on which their cosmic vision is based. It is the shaman who mediates the diverse contradictions experienced by the Indians.