The Piaroa people, known among themselves as the Huottüja or De'aruhua, are a pre-Columbian South American indigenous ethnic group of the middle Orinoco Basin in present-day Colombia and Venezuela, living in an area larger than Belgium, roughly circumscribed by the Suapure, Parguaza (north), the Ventuari (south-east), the Manapiare (north-east) and the right bank of the Orinoco (west). Their present-day population is about 15,000 (INE 2002), with an estimated 2,500 living on the left bank of the Orinoco River, in Colombia, in several reservations between the Vichada (north) and the Guaviare (south).

Shamanism or samanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner interacting with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into the physical world for the purpose of healing, divination, or to aid human beings in some other way.