Iwia is the man-eating ogre of Achuar myth, a giant of insatiable appetite who preys on human beings and hoards the birds and beasts of the forest. In the central narrative he slays the parents of the boy Etsa and rears him as a captive hunter, only for Etsa to grow, see through his bondage and destroy the ogre, freeing the game he had swallowed. The name is bound up with iwianch, the broader Jivaroan term for the malevolent ghosts of the dead and forest demons, and Iwia embodies the devouring wildness against which ordered, cultivating, sociable human life is defined.