Shamanic healer shares old traditions

BATAVIA – Rodrigo Duque was born in Ecuador and grew up with a mother whose gift of intuition was extremely high – a link to his natural-born gift as a shaman.

At 19, he co-founded a nonprofit devoted to preserving and sharing native traditions from North, Central and South America.

After he immigrated to the U.S. in 1983, Duque said he received a call from Lakota Sioux Chief and medicine man Luciano Perez.

“I don’t know how he got my name, but he called me up and said, ‘I understand I need to work with you,’ ” Duque said. “How he knew where to find me was a mystery. He was in California, and I was in Chicago.”

Duque, 56, studied under Perez for more than 10 years, visiting the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota once a year for the Sun Dance Ceremony. Eventually he become a sun dancer and pipe carrier and a shaman, all in the Lakota tradition. Perez died in 2003.

With degrees in electronics engineering and global technology, Duque maintained his interest in native traditions while working for AT&T for 19 years until he retired in 2008.

Duque said retirement gave him an opportunity to do shamanic healing full time. And now he and his wife, Gina Orbe, who also was born in Ecuador, recently opened Healing Arts Metaphysical Center, 11 E. Wilson St., Batavia. The couple live in Elburn.

A shaman or Native American medicine man or healer is not a psychic, Duque said.

“My gifts are from an intuition perspective,” Duque said. “I don’t read minds. I can’t find missing stuff or tell you winning lottery numbers. I help people find the roots of their own issues. From my perspective, when I work with people, my main goal is to help the person to awake their internal powers for self healing and emotional stability.”

As part of his apprenticeship, Duque went on a vision quest of four days without food, water or access to electronics – phone, cellphone or television. Orbe said her husband completed the vision quest in South Dakota in 1989 to participate fully as a sun dancer.

“I knew he had been working to honor the traditions and make sure this was done with the utmost respect,” Orbe said. “When he was invited to participate, it was, ‘How do we coordinate schedules?’ He was an engineer and had to take time off from work, and it was important for us to support him.”

As part of the vision quest, Duque participated in a ceremony in which his chest was pierced, she said. “You are asking to be of service, asking to do good and – in order to make that petition – you are asking something, for guidance, help, family blessings, you must sacrifice yourself. There is a … giving of your flesh,” Orbe said. “They make a little cut and put a piece of sacred wood with a rope on both ends.”

At some point during the ceremony, the wood is pulled out. Orbe said when he returned home, her husband’s wounds were packed with herbs and he went to work the next day.

But his spiritual journey confirmed for both of them that he was on the right path as a healer.

When someone comes to Duque for healing or consultation, some of the tools he might use are Native American medicine cards, featuring animals such as an eagle, a turtle, snake or wolf. The cards are tools to help a person achieve internal balance, he said.

“Internal balance helps protect you from what is around you that is stressful, a bad influence,” Duque said. “We provide ways to enhance protection … my goal is for the person to retain their own balance so their own natural forces, their own natural protection would be up and active.”

An example would be if a person took Tylenol for a headache – the pill takes away the physical pain of the headache, but Duque said he would help the person find the root cause of the headache.

Duque helps people suffering grief from a death or broken relationship, job losses or being unhappy in a job.

“Let’s say we have a dialogue,” Duque said. “To one ear, I listen to the problem and to the other ear, I listen to the practical solutions. If that does not happen, then I might not be the right person.”

As a shaman, Duque also sees how the modern world separates people from nature, which he tries to reverse through counseling and various ceremonies hosted at the center, such as the recent pipe ceremony and full moon ceremony.

“We are going so far away from nature, we are very weak beings,” Duque said. “We need to reconnect back to nature. Society put so much artificial things around us; we are used to the concrete and not to the dirt. One of the best medicines [is] take your shoes off and get in contact with Mother Earth through the grass, through the dirt.”