On the lakefront boulevard in Peru, near the Ucayali River—the main headwaters of the Amazon—sits a café unlike any other. KenéCafé sits between plant medicine retreats and the bustling energy of Peru's fastest-growing city, Pucallpa.

This is the first café owned and operated entirely by the Shipibo people, whose shamans National Geographic explorer Wade Davis called "the Harvard or Sorbonne of the Amazon: the highest reference in matters of knowledge."

The KenéCafé has a beautiful awning and outdoor seating and a view of the water. Step inside and you'll find some remarkable things, a mix of North and South: an espresso machine serving coffee beans from Ucayali, Italian cappuccino alongside Shipibo botanical drinks, plant medicine extracts next to WiFi routers, local wood-appointed carpentry complemented by air conditioning. Every element represents a careful fusion of North and South, ancient and modern, sacred and practical. KenéCafé is an embassy of the forest in the city, a meeting point for revolution, where kinship, resistance, and indigenous renaissance brew quietly behind every cup.

To understand what makes KenéCafé revolutionary, you must first understand the profound injustice it seeks to correct. The Shipibo people possess one of the world's richest cultures, recognized globally for their plant medicines and their intricate geometric patterns called kené. These kené designs represent thousands of years of accumulated wisdom, sacred patterns received through plant medicine visions that translate nature's intelligence into visual language.

Yet, despite creating art celebrated worldwide, the Shipibo live in material poverty and economic disenfranchisement. Their greatest potential source of wealth—their intellectual property—has been systematically extracted by outsiders. Middlemen and middlewomen profit from reselling kené handicrafts. Retreat operators employ Shipibo shamans while keeping the lion's share of profits. And countless businesses worldwide use Shipibo patterns without permission or compensation, raking in tens of millions of dollars in revenue per year.

This isn't a case of cultural misunderstanding. Both Shipibo and Western cultures understand intellectual property perfectly. Shipibo artists know exactly whose designs belong to whom and who deserves recognition. This is a case of misuse of mechanisms for protection and neglect of fair compensation.

That changes with KenéCafé. The project was started by a Shipibo lawyer, Demer (Korin Niwe) Gonzales Vasquez, one of only three lawyers in the Shipibo tribe, who wrote his dissertation specifically on protecting Shipibo intellectual property. His vision was simple yet radical: introduce modern IP protection systems to Shipibo artists while introducing the world to Shipibo concepts of intellectual property ownership. He is one of the heads of a project called IP Squared: Indigenous Peoples’ Intellectual Property.

Every artwork sold at KenéCafé—whether in person or online through the Kene Life platform—operates under a revolutionary licensing system. Here's how it works: 25% of every sale goes to royalty payments. These aren't one-time fees but ongoing compensation for each product sold. The artist receives 80% of these royalties, while 20% flows to the Kene Rao Foundation, a legal defense fund protecting the intellectual property of the entire Shipibo people.

This represents something unprecedented: a system for selling indigenous designs that actually collaborates closely with and returns revenue to the indigenous community. No one else selling Shipibo kené patterns has bothered to license them properly.

What makes this royalty system possible is the convergence of two powerful technologies that have never met before. From the Amazon comes an ancient technology perfected over millennia: plant medicine like ayahuasca and kené huasté that allows humans to communicate directly with nature's intelligence. The Shipibo have preserved and refined this technology for connecting with plant consciousness and translating those conversations into the sacred geometric patterns of kené.

From the North comes a different kind of technology: intellectual property systems, smart contracts, and cryptocurrency that enable fair wealth distribution on a global scale. Both cultures understand ownership and credit, but Northerners bring the technological infrastructure to track and protect that ownership worldwide.

The revolutionary moment happens when these technologies meet. After Shipibo artists create kené through plant medicine visions—weaving rugs, painting mugs, and designing textiles—lawyers working with Kene Life register the designs and ensure fair payment through smart contracts and cryptocurrency. Each sale generates royalties that flow directly back to the artists and their community, most of whom don’t have bank accounts but can receive digital cash payments through crypto.

For example: the below kené tapestry was created by a Shipibo woman named Elisia. Her authorship of the design is registered in a contract saved in Google Drive. Whoever buys the cloth knows to send royalties to KeneRao–and he did!

The cultural exchange and technological fusion benefits both sides. For centuries, Westerners have been losing touch with nature's intelligence, forgetting how to listen to plants and understand their wisdom, while the Shipibo have preserved this crucial technology for communicating with non-human intelligence.

At KenéCafé, urban visitors from around the world encounter Shipibo guides who can still talk to plants and capture what they say in visual form. But unlike typical extraction where knowledge flows one way out of the Amazon, this royalty system creates genuine reciprocity.

KenéCafé is proof of concept for a completely different relationship between traditional knowledge and modern economics. As the world increasingly seeks indigenous wisdom to address ecological and spiritual crises, this project demonstrates how such engagement can be mutually beneficial rather than extractive.

Every revolution begins with an idea, and KenéCafé's idea is simple: the people who create cultural wealth should be the ones who benefit from it. Through proper licensing, traditional knowledge receives the legal protection it deserves. Royalties flow to artists. Ancient wisdom, creative talent and hard work, and modern technology create something neither could achieve alone.

This is what happens when plant medicine meets blockchain, when ancient wisdom encounters modern fairness, when sacred geometry finds digital protection. In the KenéCafé, two worlds don't just meet: they brew new cultural possibilities together, one cup at a time.

On the lakefront boulevard in Peru, near the Ucayali River—the main headwaters of the Amazon—sits a café unlike any other. KenéCafé sits between plant medicine retreats and the bustling energy of Peru's fastest-growing city, Pucallpa.

This is the first café owned and operated entirely by the Shipibo people, whose shamans National Geographic explorer Wade Davis called "the Harvard or Sorbonne of the Amazon: the highest reference in matters of knowledge."

The KenéCafé has a beautiful awning and outdoor seating and a view of the water. Step inside and you'll find some remarkable things, a mix of North and South: an espresso machine serving coffee beans from Ucayali, Italian cappuccino alongside Shipibo botanical drinks, plant medicine extracts next to WiFi routers, local wood-appointed carpentry complemented by air conditioning. Every element represents a careful fusion of North and South, ancient and modern, sacred and practical. KenéCafé is an embassy of the forest in the city, a meeting point for revolution, where kinship, resistance, and indigenous renaissance brew quietly behind every cup.

To understand what makes KenéCafé revolutionary, you must first understand the profound injustice it seeks to correct. The Shipibo people possess one of the world's richest cultures, recognized globally for their plant medicines and their intricate geometric patterns called kené. These kené designs represent thousands of years of accumulated wisdom, sacred patterns received through plant medicine visions that translate nature's intelligence into visual language.

Yet, despite creating art celebrated worldwide, the Shipibo live in material poverty and economic disenfranchisement. Their greatest potential source of wealth—their intellectual property—has been systematically extracted by outsiders. Middlemen and middlewomen profit from reselling kené handicrafts. Retreat operators employ Shipibo shamans while keeping the lion's share of profits. And countless businesses worldwide use Shipibo patterns without permission or compensation, raking in tens of millions of dollars in revenue per year.

This isn't a case of cultural misunderstanding. Both Shipibo and Western cultures understand intellectual property perfectly. Shipibo artists know exactly whose designs belong to whom and who deserves recognition. This is a case of misuse of mechanisms for protection and neglect of fair compensation.

That changes with KenéCafé. The project was started by a Shipibo lawyer, Demer (Korin Niwe) Gonzales Vasquez, one of only three lawyers in the Shipibo tribe, who wrote his dissertation specifically on protecting Shipibo intellectual property. His vision was simple yet radical: introduce modern IP protection systems to Shipibo artists while introducing the world to Shipibo concepts of intellectual property ownership. He is one of the heads of a project called IP Squared: Indigenous Peoples’ Intellectual Property.

Every artwork sold at KenéCafé—whether in person or online through the Kene Life platform—operates under a revolutionary licensing system. Here's how it works: 25% of every sale goes to royalty payments. These aren't one-time fees but ongoing compensation for each product sold. The artist receives 80% of these royalties, while 20% flows to the Kene Rao Foundation, a legal defense fund protecting the intellectual property of the entire Shipibo people.

This represents something unprecedented: a system for selling indigenous designs that actually collaborates closely with and returns revenue to the indigenous community. No one else selling Shipibo kené patterns has bothered to license them properly.

What makes this royalty system possible is the convergence of two powerful technologies that have never met before. From the Amazon comes an ancient technology perfected over millennia: plant medicine like ayahuasca and kené huasté that allows humans to communicate directly with nature's intelligence. The Shipibo have preserved and refined this technology for connecting with plant consciousness and translating those conversations into the sacred geometric patterns of kené.

From the North comes a different kind of technology: intellectual property systems, smart contracts, and cryptocurrency that enable fair wealth distribution on a global scale. Both cultures understand ownership and credit, but Northerners bring the technological infrastructure to track and protect that ownership worldwide.

The revolutionary moment happens when these technologies meet. After Shipibo artists create kené through plant medicine visions—weaving rugs, painting mugs, and designing textiles—lawyers working with Kene Life register the designs and ensure fair payment through smart contracts and cryptocurrency. Each sale generates royalties that flow directly back to the artists and their community, most of whom don’t have bank accounts but can receive digital cash payments through crypto.

For example: the below kené tapestry was created by a Shipibo woman named Elisia. Her authorship of the design is registered in a contract saved in Google Drive. Whoever buys the cloth knows to send royalties to KeneRao–and he did!

The cultural exchange and technological fusion benefits both sides. For centuries, Westerners have been losing touch with nature's intelligence, forgetting how to listen to plants and understand their wisdom, while the Shipibo have preserved this crucial technology for communicating with non-human intelligence.

At KenéCafé, urban visitors from around the world encounter Shipibo guides who can still talk to plants and capture what they say in visual form. But unlike typical extraction where knowledge flows one way out of the Amazon, this royalty system creates genuine reciprocity.

KenéCafé is proof of concept for a completely different relationship between traditional knowledge and modern economics. As the world increasingly seeks indigenous wisdom to address ecological and spiritual crises, this project demonstrates how such engagement can be mutually beneficial rather than extractive.

Every revolution begins with an idea, and KenéCafé's idea is simple: the people who create cultural wealth should be the ones who benefit from it. Through proper licensing, traditional knowledge receives the legal protection it deserves. Royalties flow to artists. Ancient wisdom, creative talent and hard work, and modern technology create something neither could achieve alone.

This is what happens when plant medicine meets blockchain, when ancient wisdom encounters modern fairness, when sacred geometry finds digital protection. In the KenéCafé, two worlds don't just meet: they brew new cultural possibilities together, one cup at a time.