text: Sebastian Woodroffe, 41, was believed to be a patient of indigenous healer Olivia Arévalo, 81 
   
   Canadian lynched in Peru after being accused of shaman's death 
   
   A Canadian man was beaten and lynched in the Peruvian Amazon after local people accused him of killing an 81-year-old indigenous healer, a police officer leading the murder investigation told the Guardian. 
   
   Olivia Arévalo, a female shaman with the native Shipibo-Konibo people, was shot twice and died on Thursday near her home in the village of Victoria Gracia in Peru’s central Amazon region of Ucayali. 
   
   Some villagers blamed Arévalo’s murder on a Canadian citizen Sebastian Woodroffe, 41, who lived in the region and was believed to be one of her patients. 
   
   Six farmers shot dead over land rights battle in Peru Read more 
   
   Police found the Canadian’s body buried in a shallow grave about one kilometre (0.6 miles) from Arévalo’s home on Saturday. 
   
   A cameraphone recording of the lynching was released in the local press and on social media. The video shows a bloodied man crying out as he lies in a puddle in front of a wooden home with a thatched roof. 
   
   Two men put a rope or rubber hose around his neck and drag him along the ground until he goes limp and falls silent. A group of people, including children, look on. 
   
   General Jorge Lam, the police officer leading the double murder inquiry, said police were following several lines of investigation. 
   
   “The body had been fully identified (as that of Sebastian Woodroffe) using fingerprints,” he said. 
   
   Ronald Suárez, the highest authority of the 40,000-strong Shipibo-Konibo people, said the men responsible for the lynching had “acted on the spur of the moment and resorted to traditional justice”. 
   
   “But we are a peaceful people who have always lived in harmony with nature,” he insisted. 
   
   “We have little confidence in the police as, so often, crimes against us go unpunished,” said Suárez, who is president of the Shipibo Konibo and Xetebo council. 
   
   Arévalo was a “walking library of our traditional knowledge, the maximum expression of our culture,” he said, describing her death as “very painful”. The Shipibo Konibo people are known for their art and use of psychoactive plant brew Ayahuasca. 
   
   Arévalo’s killing follows the unsolved murders of indigenous activists who repeatedly faced death threats for protecting their ancestral lands. 
   
   Police are also examining a theory a possible motive may have been that Arévalo’s son owed money to the Canadian. There are also unconfirmed reports the killer may have been a gang member looking to collect a debt from Arévalo’s son. 
   
   Woodroffe is believed to have travelled to Peru from his home in Vancouver Island, Canada, to learn how use traditional medicine to treat drug addictions. He used the crowdfunding website Indiegogo to raise more than $2,000 to fund the trip. 
   
   Peru’s human rights Ombudsman’s office has called for an investigation, and tweeted its “empathic rejection of the lynching and murder of the alleged perpetrator of the murder of indigenous leader Olivia Arévalo”. 
   
   “Canada extends its deepest condolences following the reported assassination of‎ Olivia Arévalo Lomas, an indigenous elder and human rights defender of the Shipobo-Konibo people in Peru’s Ucayali region,” a spokesman for Canada’s foreign affairs department, said. 
   
   “We are also aware that a Canadian ‎was killed in a related incident. Consular services are being provided to the family of the Canadian.” ||||| A friend fears that a man allegedly lynched in Peru is his friend of 12 years, Sebastian Woodroffe, whom he describes as a gentle person on a journey to find enlightenment. 
   
   Yarrow Willard said the Comox Valley-area man had travelled to Peru several times to experiment with ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drink, at rainforest retreats. 
   
   Ayahuasca, a concoction combining an Amazonian vine and dimethyltryptamine (DMT), is not normally associated with violence. 
   
   On Saturday night, Willard learned that Woodroffe is feared dead in Peru, the place he went seeking "deeper meaning." 
   
   Global Affairs Canada has not yet confirmed his identity, though the death of a Canadian has been confirmed. Peruvian authorities released Woodroffe's name. 
   
   The 41-year-old was allegedly lynched by people in the Ucayali region of the Amazon rainforest, who Peruvian authorities say believed that Woodroffe was involved in the shooting death of an 81-year-old traditional healer. 
   
   Olivia Arevalo Lomas of the Shipibo-Conibo ethnic group, an Indigenous healer and rights activist, was fatally shot on Thursday and Peruvian authorities described Woodroffe as her client. 
   
   "We've just been in shock. It's pretty traumatic to hear. It just felt like a scam because there is no way this person [Woodroffe] is capable of that," said Willard. 
   
   Traditional healer and elder Olivia Arevalo Lomas of the Shipibo-Conibo Indigenous people of Peru was shot and killed at her home by an unknown assailant or assailants. (Temple of the Way of Light/YouTube) 
   
   Word of this sent Willard searching for news of his friend. That's when he watched the online video purportedly showing a man being lynched. 
   
   He said he's barely slept since witnessing the sickening attack on a man who seems to moan the word mother, as he is allegedly about to die. It is difficult to identify the attack victim's face, but Willard believes it is Woodroffe. 
   
   Woodroffe grew up in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island. 
   
   In recent years, he worked odd jobs and did some professional diving, living around Courtenay and Cumberland, at times in an RV, said Willard. 
   
   A man who 'tests the boundaries' 
   
   Woodroffe's son often played with Willard's child. 
   
   "He is a little bit of a, I'll call it a shit disturber. One of these people who likes to poke, and likes to test the boundaries of people's beliefs, but is very much a gentle person underneath all that. This man has never had a gun or talked about anything along that line." 
   
   Peruvian news reports suggest that Woodroffe was killed by a group in reprisal for his suspected involvement in the brutal shooting of Arevalo Lomas. 
   
   Her killing has sparked outrage, following other unsolved murders of Indigenous activists who had repeatedly faced death threats related to efforts to keep illegal loggers and oil palm growers off Indigenous peoples' lands. 
   
   A Colombian healer measures a dose of the psychoactive drink ayahuasca in preparation for a healing ceremony. Ayahuasca is traditionally brewed from plants found in the jungles of South America. (Eitan Abramovich/AFP/Getty Images) 
   
   The elder from the Shipbo-Conibo ethnic group died at her home in the Ucayali region of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest. 
   
   Willard can't believe his friend — the attentive father of a nine-year-old boy — could be involved in a murder or any violence. 
   
   "This is not right at all," said Willard. 
   
   Willard said contacts in Peru told him Arevalo Lomas was attracting tourist dollars and could have been a target of many political forces. She advocated for the environment and had recently opened up a lucrative healing centre offering ayahuasca experiences to so-called "gringos." 
   
   Willard fears that his friend, who could be "disruptive" may have become a scapegoat in the complex political environment around this kind of tourism. 
   
   "He was a big personality," he said. 
   
   Friends say Woodroffe, who first travelled to Peru in 2016 to find natural healing and plant medicines, had become more distant after trying ayahuasca. 
   
   "He had a beautiful spark to him that people respected and loved," Willard said. 
   
   But Willard said he'd come back from experiences in South America "not broken, but troubled." 
   
   Woodroffe's family, who have been contacted by Peruvian and Canadian authorities, declined comment at this time. ||||| LIMA, Peru (AP) — A 41-year-old Canadian who traveled to Peru to study hallucinogenic medicine was killed by a mob in a remote corner of the Amazon rain forest after people blamed him for the slaying of an elderly shaman, authorities said Sunday. 
   
   Peru's attorney general's office said Sebastian Woodroffe was dragged by the neck shortly after the killing of Olivia Arevalo, an octogenarian plant healer from the Shipibo-Konibo tribe of northeastern Peru. Officials backed away from initial reports that Woodroffe was the principal suspect in Arevalo's killing. 
   
   Arevalo and Woodroffe were both killed Thursday in the indigenous community of Victoria Gracia, officials said. But police did not begin to investigate until a cellphone video appeared in local media showing a man purported to be Woodroffe begging for mercy while being dragged between thatch-roofed homes. He was then left motionless on the muddy ground. 
   
   On Saturday, officials dug up Woodroffe's body from an unmarked grave where he had been hastily buried. 
   
   Every year thousands of foreign tourists travel to the Peruvian Amazon to experiment with ayahuasca, a bitter, dark-colored brew made of a mixture of native plants. The hallucinogenic cocktail, also known as yage, has been venerated for centuries by indigenous tribes in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia as a cure for all sorts of ailments. But it's also increasingly consumed by Western tourists looking for mind-altering experiences, sometimes with deadly consequences. 
   
   Arevalo was a staunch defender of indigenous people's rights in the region. She also practiced a traditional form of singing medicine that the Shipibo believe removes negative energies from individuals and a group alike. 
   
   She can be heard singing a traditional plant song on the website of the Temple of the Way of Lights, which describes itself as a plant-shamanic healing center in the Peruvian Amazon. 
   
   In 2015, a Canadian fatally stabbed a fellow tourist from England after the two drank ayahuasca together in a spiritual ceremony a few hours' drive from where Woodroffe was killed. 
   
   Woodroffe, from the town of Courtenay on Victoria island in British Columbia, said before going to Peru that he hoped an apprenticeship with a plant healer from the Shipibo tribe would help his goal of changing careers to become an addiction counselor using hallucinogenic medicine. 
   
   "The plant medicine I have the opportunity of learning is far deeper than ingesting a plant and being healed. It is not about getting 'high' either. It is true some of the plants I will be learning about do have a perception-altering effect, but these are a few plants out of thousands I will be working with," he wrote on the Indiegogo crowd-funding website seeking financial help to advance his studies. 
   
   "I am in this for the long haul. This is more than a 'job' to me. I want not only for people to recover ... I want to turn them on to the wonders of existence, and have them leave as a renewed friend and lover of this thing we call life," he added. ||||| Image copyright Facebook/Sebastian Woodroffe Image caption Sebastian Woodroffe went to Peru to learn from indigenous plant healers, a friend said 
   
   Officials in Peru are investigating the lynching of a Canadian man in the remote Amazon region of Peru. 
   
   Police found the body of Sebastian Woodroffe, 41, on Saturday buried near where an indigenous spiritual healer had been killed days previously. 
   
   Investigators say locals suspected Mr Woodroffe of the murder of 81-year-old Olivia Arévalo, who was shot dead on Thursday. 
   
   Officials said they would not rest until both murders had been solved. 
   
   Who was Sebastian Woodroffe? 
   
   Mr Woodroffe was a Canadian citizen from the town of Courtenay on the east coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. 
   
   Canadian broadcaster CBC quoted a friend of Mr Woodroffe as saying that the 41-year-old had travelled to Peru on a number of occasions to experiment with ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drug. 
   
   Yarrow Willard described Mr Woodroffe as a gentle person on a journey to find enlightenment and "deeper meaning". 
   
   According to Canadian news portal Canoe.com, Mr Woodroffe went to the Ucayali region in Peru's rainforest hoping to do an apprenticeship with a plant healer from the Shipibo indigenous group. 
   
   "I feel responsible trying to support this culture and retain some of their treasure in me and my family, and share it with those that wish to learn," Mr Woodroffe wrote on a fundraising site. 
   
   His goal was to change careers to become an addiction counsellor using hallucinogenic medicine. 
   
   A family member's struggle with alcoholism inspired Mr Woodroffe's decision to help "fix the family spirit", he said in a 2013 YouTube video. 
   
   What happened to him? 
   
   Police launched a search for the Canadian after a video emerged on social media showing a man identified by Peruvian prosecutors as Mr Woodroffe lying in a puddle groaning while another man puts a rope around his neck and drags him along. 
   
   A group of locals stands by and watches while the man with the rope around his neck appears to go limp. 
   
   Mr Woodroffe's body was found in a shallow unmarked grave on Saturday. 
   
   Peruvian officials say forensic tests carried out on his body show that he died by strangulation and that he had received several blows across his body. 
   
   Why was he killed? 
   
   Local prosecutor Ricardo Palma Jimenez says officials are still investigating several theories as to why Mr Woodroffe was killed but local media say some villagers blamed him for the killing of Olivia Arévalo. 
   
   Mr Woodroffe had not been named as a suspect in Ms Arévalo's murder but villagers suspected him because he was allegedly one of the spiritual healer's clients. 
   
   "A foreigner can come and kill us, day after day, like dogs or cats, and nothing happens, the state does nothing," one local woman told a Peruvian official on television, according to the Washington Post. 
   
   "We want the communities of the Amazon to know that there is justice," Jimenez told TV Peru in Ucayali. "But not justice by their own hands." 
   
   Who was Olivia Arévalo? 
   
   Image copyright Tom Askew Image caption Olivia Arévalo was a spiritual healer as well as a rights activist 
   
   Ms Arévalo was a member of the indigenous Shipibo-Conibo group, who was known as a spiritual healer and shaman in her local community. 
   
   She was also a vocal advocate for the group's culture and rights. 
   
   She was shot dead outside her home on Thursday. Her killing sparked outrage among the local community who have seen a number of indigenous leaders killed over recent years. 
   
   Image copyright Reuters Image caption Some members of Ms Arévalo's community blamed Mr Woodroffe for her killing 
   
   As a spiritual healer, Ms Arévalo would have had extensive knowledge about ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic drug Mr Woodroffe went to the Amazon to study. 
   
   The Shipibo have been using ayahuasca for centuries as part of their "healing ceremonies". 
   
   What's ayahuasca? 
   
   Ayahuasca is considered one of the strongest psychedelic drugs in the world. 
   
   Read more about ayahuasca: 
   
   Also known as yage, it is a blend of two plants - the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and a shrub called chacruna (Psychotria viridis), which contains the hallucinogenic drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT). 
   
   DMT - and therefore ayahuasca - is illegal in the UK, the US and many other countries although some exceptions are made for members of particular churches which use the tea as part of their religious ceremonies. 
   
   It has been used by shamans, or healers, in the Amazon for centuries for medical and spiritual purposes. 
   
   It has become increasingly popular with backpackers who take part in ayahuasca ceremonies in the rainforest. 
   
   A number of deaths has been attributed to the drug, including that of British gap-year student Henry Miller in Colombia in 2014 and that of New Zealander Matthew Dawson-Clarke last year. 
   
   In at least one case, a Briton was stabbed to death during an ayahuasca ceremony when he allegedly attacked a Canadian who was also taking part in the ceremony. 
   
   Read: Briton Unais Gomes killed in Peru 'during shamanic ceremony' 
   
   Are lynchings common in the area? 
   
   Remote areas of the Amazon have a very thin police presence and crimes often go unpunished. 
   
   Communities sometimes bypass the police altogether, choosing to punish those they suspect of committing crimes themselves. 
   
   Local media report that villagers were outraged by the murder of Ms Arévalo, who was an influential figure. 
   
   It is not clear, however, why their anger focussed on the Canadian as other indigenous leaders have in the past been targeted by landowners.
target: – The death of a Canadian man is making headlines for its location, manner, and the murkiness around it. The body of Sebastian Woodroffe was found in a shallow grave Saturday in the Ucayali region of Peru's Amazon by police who began searching for the 41-year-old after a video was posted to social media that showed him being dragged on the ground with a rope around his neck until his body goes limp. One early theory, according to local media and a police officer who spoke with the Guardian, is that he was killed over the murder of Olivia Arévalo, an octogenarian shaman from the Shipibo-Konibo tribe who was shot dead Thursday. Woodroffe's body was buried a little more than half-a-mile from the site where she was killed, and he was thought to be one of her clients. But while one potential motive being investigated is that Arévalo's son owed Woodroffe money, another theory is that the same son owed money to a gang member who pulled the trigger. And the AP says authorities have "backed away" from reports that Woodroffe is even a suspect. The BBC reports Woodroffe had been in Peru previously to try the hallucinogen ayahuasca, and that he was looking to start a new career involving the use of "plant medicine" in drug addiction treatment. The Guardian cites a years-old Indiegogo campaign that helped fund a trip from his Vancouver Island home to Peru; on the campaign page he referenced a relative's alcohol addiction and wrote, "Traditional Detox Centres have a 5-8% success rate. Unacceptable." The CBC reports Woodroffe, who was apparently also killed Thursday, leaves behind a 9-year-old son.