There is an emerging multi-billon dollar market for psychedelic therapies as the research becomes more mainstream. As for-profit companies begin to commodify psilocybin, researchers and activists demand these companies pay reparations for the stolen knowledge from the Mazatec people and engage in a reciprocal relationship with Indigenous peoples.

The Yanesha of Peru, along with other Amazonian groups, engage with cultural tourism in response to a global market that relentlessly reduces their choices. Greater Indigenous autonomy yields not only higher biodiversity, but also allows for community-led solutions to social, ecological, and economic problems. Supporting Indigenous autonomy involves stepping into a story of relationship, seeing the world as a society of beings instead of a collection of detached objects, and learning to listen when the forest speaks.

This text was originally a conference paper in Spanish as well as an attempt to bridge what matters to medicine women and men, ethnographical experience and feminist theory.

In the first part of this series on the Epistemics of Ayahuasca, Medical Anthropologist Adam Aronovich presents insights based on his long term qualitative research in the rainforest, framing them within ways of being and knowing prevalent amongst amazonian amerindian groups and the ongoing eradication of non-hegemonic epistemologies by the dominant culture.

Jasmine Virdi explores how ayahuasca facilitators have adapted and changed their practices and ceremonial protocols to meet the challenges that have emerged as a result of the global coronavirus pandemic.