With an abundance of research linking forest loss to the emergence of disease, an understanding that Indigenous-managed lands harbor greater biodiversity than wildlife preserves, and the unique potential of traditional plant medicines to alleviate suffering, members of the psychedelic community need to support Indigenous groups still navigating a legacy of colonization and exploitation. Far-reaching, non-governmental conservation organizations have high infrastructural costs that often prevent support from reaching the most vulnerable. This necessitates a way to facilitate direct donations to local, grassroots initiatives that lack access to large institutions. With a recognition of the inextricable connection between biological and cultural diversity, Chacruna launchedthe Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative of the Americas (IRI). Through a network of relationships with trusted organizers, we have created an Indigenous-centered, community-driven list to represent a range of projects addressing everything from food and environmental health to land-tenure, reforestation, and cultural conservation, including educational, economic, and institutional support. IRI is the product of working in direct contact with Indigenous leaders and small, non-profit coordinators who prioritize the autonomy of local people. Rather than imposing Western ideas of sustainable development, the goal of this initiative is to promote community-led, grassroots projects designed and implemented by local Indigenous people to address their own self-determined needs. Some of the most salient lessons psychedelics teach us stress the significance of our interrelationships and the importance of reciprocity; IRI honors those lessons by offering a channel for giving back directly, in a way that fosters lasting, long-term opportunities for healing and resiliency.

Plant medicine practices in the West have mostly been used for personal healing, empowerment or self-actualization. However, in Indigenous settings, these practices have been ancestrally used for mobilizing forms of responsibility and accountability towards the wider planetary metabolism. Such practices can be described as a form neuro-decolonization that can enable the bio-intelligence of the Earth to rewire our neurophysiology away from unconscious investments in the continuity of capitalism and colonialism. However, for these practices to recalibrate our vital compass towards maturity, sobriety, humility, discernment and accountability, they need to be accompanied by hard teachings that visibilize our complicity in systemic harm and that interrupt colonial desires for purity, innocence and individual self-actualization, which are characteristic of spiritual bypassing. This panel will introduce the work of The “Teia das 5 Curas” (web of five modes of healing), a network of Indigenous communities from Brazil, Peru, Mexico, and Canada. The network emphasizes the importance of 5 modes of decolonial healing and transformative justice, which include healing the ways we think (cognitive justice), healing the ways we feel (affective justice), healing the ways we relate (relational justice), healing the ways we exchange (economic justice), and healing the ways we see ourselves as part of the planet’s metabolism (ecological justice). Our collaborations amplify the visibility of Indigenous practices of neuro-decolonization, while drawing attention to common harmful patterns of commodification, extraction and consumption that often characterize engagements with Indigenous communities and their practices. When unacknowledged, these patterns work against developing reciprocal engagements with Indigenous communities.

Fifty years ago, I journeyed to the Sibundoy Valley in the Andean mountains of Southern Colombian to conduct interdisciplinary research on illness categories and diagnosis among the Kamsa Indigenous peoples. With a medical anthropology focus on the relation between diagnosis and treatment, I had several encounters with Kamsa shamans, famous specialists in yajé (ayahuasca) rituals. Thus began my life-long interest in and dedication to the topic of shamanism. The Kamsa shamans pointed me in the direction of the Amazonian lowlands where I met and spent two years among the Siona collecting shamanic narratives and dialoging with shamans about their multidimensional universe and their experiences and negotiations with the inhabitants of the invisible realms. In the 1980s I moved to Brazil, where ayahuasca religions were beginning to expand beyond Amazonia, and thus commenced interchanges with the leaders and followers of some of these groups. More recently I have witnessed first-hand a revitalization of shamanism among indigenous groups, both in Brazil and Colombia, and the interchange between indigenous shamans and non-indigenous groups often identified as “neo-shamanic”. Manifestations and expressions of shamanism have multiplied, transformed and expanded into a global phenomenon. So too has our understanding radically changed over this last half-century. We have moved beyond the ethnocentric debates about whether their practices are magic or not, about the definition of true shamans versus charlatans and about whether the magical flights indicate that they are schizophrenic or not. Today shamans and their practices are taken seriously, not only by the participants of their rituals, indigenous or not, but also by scientific fields that study their practices, including anthropology, psychology, biological and environmental sciences, and neurosciences. Based on a half century of personal experience and academic involvement with the theme, I will reflect upon this history of transformations as shamans circulate between their traditional communities and contemporary societies and as we, as non-indigenous participants in this phenomenon, begin to take them seriously.

Psychedelic-assisted therapy continues to gain popularity as a promising treatment for some of the most disabling mental health conditions. As these treatments go mainstream, conversations around the importance of accessibility, “diversity,” and “inclusion” are becoming more prominent in clinical care. However, characteristics of white supremacy culture (Jones & Okun, 2001) and other oppressive practices often inform research design and organize the therapeutic process. With the obsession to focus on drug approval, we undermine the relational and spiritual aspects of this spirit-based work. How do we honor the sacred in science? How do we confront the collective shadow in this work? How do we decolonize psychedelic medicine without appropriating other cultures? The presenter will explore these questions from her experience as a Black American therapist and researcher and provide examples of service or business models that are rooted in reciprocity, liberation, and sustainability.

With the arrival of “heroic doses” of capital into what can now veritably be called a “psychedelic industry”, the pivotal role of philanthropic funding is necessarily shifting. Given this isn’t the first time that philanthropic giving has paved the way for businesses to profit, and in the face of broadening decriminalization, legalization, and medicalization successes, how are the strategies and priorities of philanthropic funders changing? What are the opportunities and challenges when major foundations new to the field add psychedelics as a funding priority? How can for profits be motivated to share profits? Taking it a step further, in what ways should or could philanthropic and corporate giving embody indigenous principles like Sacred Reciprocity? This panel will explore these and other questions with key philanthropic leaders in the field, as well as officially launch Chacruna’s Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative.

I am related to everything. I am the weakest of all my relatives. I have been entrusted with original instruction on how to live a good life. To never take more than I need. To always give back when I take. To prepare for seven future generations. I remember what it means to be a human being. This presentation will share a foundational philosophy learned alongside Indigenous leaders from The Amazon to The Great Lakes, through encounters with sacred plant wisdom. With the rise in popularity of sacred plant wisdom, especially amongst the colonially educated elite, this talk serves as a reminder of our responsibility as humans to our families, communities, environment, and all our relations.

This presentation reviews the legal state of ayahuasca law under RFRA in the US today, including the most recent developments in law enforcement, the DEA, and Homeland Security/Customs. Sean and Martha will discuss the increase in seizures of sacramental ayahuasca at the borders during the pandemic; the status of two cases brought in Federal district court in 2020; the DEA’s apparent posture toward ayahuasca and intention to engage in rule-making under the Administrative Procedures Act; and the most promising avenues toward securing a clear and workable right to consume ayahuasca in a bona fide religious setting. We’ll also discuss current efforts for and potential barriers to this important religious freedom. Both Martha and Sean serve on the Council for the Protection for Sacred Plants, which is supporting legal action in support of the Church of the Eagle and the Condor in United Sates.

I have been visiting the same Mazatec family for the past 26 years. Our friendship began in my quest to heal a condition, with the help of plants and their knowledge-holders. I found my way to a remote family in Southern Mexico. This seed grew into an intergenerational, cross-cultural friendship between our two extended families. I will discuss the beauty, honor and challenges of being in a decades-long relationship of learning and reciprocity with the holders of ancient plant and mushroom knowledge, as expressed in one family’s lineage. I will also show and discuss Almost Visible, a short film made by my daughter, artist Klea McKenna, about this relationship and the long process of getting to deeply know people who hold a different worldview. The film is also a window into the actual daily circumstances of one indigenous family – three generations who are descended from an elderly curandero who uses mushrooms and plants to care for his community. His granddaughters collaborated in making this film. The migrations and adaptations of indigenous people whose traditions are disrupted, who leave the land and language of their origins, reflect a worldwide reality. We hope to expand this into a longer film, using both our ample archival material and recent footage. I am writing about this process of being a go-between—gathering and sharing knowledge from nature, humans, and spirit, and how to do it honorably—while my rural and urban Mazatec friends navigate the perils and inequities of the 21st century.

Connection is a key to mental health and well-being. Psychedelics help us to re-connect to ourselves, to our bodies, to other people and to nature. Recent studies demonstrate that psychedelic use predicts pro-environmental behaviour and increases nature-relatedness in the long-term. Metaphorically speaking, sacred plants and medicines dissolve the boundaries separating head and heart, spirit and body, human and Earth. Psychologically speaking, these profound changes are mediated by the ego-dissolution and the experience of awe. These effects are fascinating, and incredibly important to illuminate, yet it is also important to shed light on another side of the story: the ecological and social vulnerabilities exposed by the current surge of interest in and increased use of these plants (and fungi and toads), as well as the harms that the globalization of the interest in these substances might bring to indigenous people and their territories. This presentation will review the conservation issues around some of the most well-known naturally occurring psychedelics: peyote, ayahuasca, Sonoran Desert toad and iboga. This will be an introduction to new and exciting Chacruna’s Conservation of Sacred Plants Series.

The title of this session is a wordplay on a verse from Os Mutantes’ song, “Panis et Circensis,” part of the late 60s Tropicalia. This movement relied on the amalgamation of the then-pulsing and foreign psychedelic movement with Brazilian popular culture and its local ways of creating art. Nowadays, a new hype on psychedelics revolves around what has become known as “psychedelic science.” This type of science also flourishes in Brazil in specific, original, and potent ways, creating new perspectives based on the science-making of the Global South and, therefore, with epistemological and methodological fissures, especially on the standardization of what psychedelic science is and how to produce it. In this session, the presenters will describe the current scenario of Brazilian psychedelic science. They will discuss the research that has been done in the country; the grey area regarding legal and illegal therapeutic practice with ibogaine, ayahuasca, and other psychedelics, and its impact on the Brazilian therapeutic market; and the political and social implications of psychedelic science. The presenters will also discuss the fact that psychedelic research is done mostly within Brazilian public hospitals and universities, institutions that do not represent the populations in the Global North, and have been suffering from budget cuts the last few years. Finally, they will present antiprohibitionist Brazilian psychedelic social movements that have been publicizing the country’s psychedelic science and a myriad of uses of psychoactive plants and chemical compounds.

Halfway through the Decriminalize Nature DC campaign in 2020, I, Chairwoman and Proposer of Initiative 81: the Entheogenic Plant and Fungus Policy Act of 2020  in Washington, DC, encountered direct opposition from a member of Congress who was trying to stop the campaign from moving forward. This minor setback initiated a process of engaging with the federal government about the local Washington, DC psychedelic movement as well as the national and international moment psychedelics were having. In navigating these dialogues, I honed effective strategies for educating lawmakers about psychedelics and the movement as a whole, which led to open and honest discussions about mental health, psychedelic research, and cultural reverence of sacred plants as sacraments. Inspired by the overwhelming success of communicating the power of plant medicines to all of DC’s demographics, I founded Plant Medicine Coalition (PMC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to advocating for natural and synthetic psychedelics at the federal, state, and local levels. PMC envisions a world where all members of the psychedelic movement have a seat at the table and a voice with their government. Given the wide range of stakeholders, how does PMC and it’s partners plan to advocate for and create a psychedelic ecosystem that is inclusive? With influence of the biotech sector growing, what must be done to ensure the cultural and spiritual considerations of plant medicine remain front and center with policymakers? This presentation will explore these questions and others, while also laying out PMC’s 2021 advocacy goals.

Our mission is to decriminalize plant medicines in general and in particular for religious, sacramental, and ceremonial purposes. Working initially in Portland and in partnership with indigenous stakeholders among others, we aim to do this while also promoting sustainable sourcing. With the historic passage of Measure 109 that legalizes psilocybin-assisted therapy and Measure 110 that decriminalizes all drugs including plant medicine allies for personal use, Oregon is setting the example and blazing the path for the rest of the country. Measure 109 will allow for group-facilitated work in a more shamanic ceremonial approach with mushrooms, alongside the more traditional therapeutic one-on-one approach. And Measure 110’s cutoffs allow for personal use of all other plant medicines. However, Measure 110’s cutoffs are geared towards personal use of the final medicine, not for what it takes to properly grow and prepare them, especially by spiritual groups in amounts for collective ceremonial use. There are also issues of sustainable sourcing of medicine that simply decriminalizing for personal use does not address. The suppression of plant medicines is a well-documented issue of environmental injustice while the policing of people who work with these medicines allows for racial profiling. It is the intent of the Portland Plant Medicine Alliance to decriminalize plant medicines in general and in particular for religious, sacramental, and ceremonial purposes. We aim to do this first in Portland and then at the state level, and to set the right precedent and tone for federal policy.

This panel is about perspectives of cultural appropriation and the impact this has on communities in resistance. We will discuss how globalization, medicalization and commercialization of ayahuasca practices interfere with transitional justice and hinder biocultural resistance and survival in indigenous Colombia. Furthermore, we will discuss how neo-colonial, re-victimizing, sensationalist fundraising appropriates and exploits the indigenous image. Lastly, we will make a case for new practices of decolonized indigenous fundraising.

Starting in 1846 the Mexican Pharmaceutical Academy created a National Pharmacopeia, which had the objective of determining the appropriate conditions and dosage for prescribing drugs, chemical products and other pharmaceutical preparations. The pharmacopeia manuals also aimed to include endemic plants, and psychoactive species that grew in the national territory and considered their traditional use. The pharmacopeias included thousands of local plants, but here I ́m going to focus on species that have psychoactive properties, such as: peyote, toloache (Datura inoxia), ololiuhqui (Ipomea violacea and Rivea corymbosa), cacao, and tobacco. This presentation aims to analyze the national pharmacopeias and other medical sources, which sought to corroborate the indigenous uses and the properties of these species. I will specifically focus on material written between 1846 and 1930. Even as some of the traditional uses were considered “superstitions” or “uncivilized”, scientists conducted empiric experiments to look for “more rational” applications that could be included in the national pharmacopeia.

In September 2020 we asked for people to contribute posts about the historic contributions of women in psychedelics. The response has been impressive. Writers and observers of psychedelics have shown us the many significant and often subtle ways that gender has shaped our understanding of psychedelics. Reclaiming space for women is more than just acknowledging their presence in a psychedelic past. It also means recognizing why women avoided being associated with psychedelics at times, despite often having deep knowledge of such plant medicines. In other moments patients more readily realized the importance of having both men and women present in a psychedelic trial. Some openly suggested that the symbolic presence of a mother and father figure helped to balance the emotional space, as part of set and setting. Others explained that women in the therapeutic space were more likely to play a caring role, whether reaching out to hold someone’s hand, or adjusting the lighting in anticipation of a changing mood or perception. While it is risky to assume that women are innately better at care giving, the mere presence of a woman in the therapeutic space was reassuring for some participants. These impressions challenge our ideas about gender but also should complicate our understandings of care, or emotional space in the set and setting. Music therapists even theorized this idea further. Women like Helen Bonny and Hermina Browne developed soundscapes for psychedelic experiences that played upon emotional responses, while their male counterparts in the 1960s developed different strategies for using music in a psychedelic setting. In this presentation I examine some of the complicated ways that women have been involved, while also considering how and why authors have handled issues of gender and psychedelics.

The therapeutic use of peyote occupies an outstanding place in healing rituals throughout Mexico. The ritual, called “meeting” or “tipi ceremony,” of the Native American Church has been adopted in this dynamic cultural field in the last few decades. Clearly, this shows the hybridization, cultural adaptation, and borrowing of practices within an entheogenic field in its expansive process of internationalization; in Mexico, this includes non-native groups of urban origin. Tipi ceremonies have become discursive devices that end up defining and categorizing the therapeutic experience in this process. In this presentation, we reflect on crucial life points of several individuals who have re-signified their lives by assuming or understanding critical experiences through peyote use. In the first part, we describe the cultural, legal, and political balance that underlies ritual and therapeutic peyote consumption in Mexico, a crucial step in understanding these practices as an alternative therapeutic resource. In the second part, we show our analysis of the impact and receptivity caused by an extensive anthropological, literary, and self-help bibliographies around peyote. Finally, we will reflect on the testimonials, life histories, and interpretations given by tipi ceremony participants, granting the plant agency and therapeutic capacity.

After a brief overview of the three main historical waves of San Pedro use (archaic fertility rituals, curanderismo, and spiritual seeking), this presentation summarizes its main forms of preparation and healing effects. Then it introduces the phenomenon of shared visions, in which several San Pedro practitioners report seeing—with their open eyes—the same subtle phenomena in the external world. This phenomenon, it is argued, not only raises a serious challenge to contemporary scientific naturalism, but also suggest the existence of subtle or energetic dimensions of reality coexisting with the physical domain. The possibility of San Pedro’s intersubjective testing of so-called supernatural claims paves the way for participatory decolonial research programs developed by Western researchers in symmetrical collaboration with traditional healers. The presentation concludes outlining the stages of one such research program that embraces an open naturalism, being thus receptive to both the ontological integrity of spiritual referents and the plausibility a multiverse—or multidimensional cosmos—housing a rich variety of subtle worlds.

This panel will explore different dimensions of ayahuasca’s profound effect on human consciousness as it relates to therapeutic healing. Panelists will discuss cognitive and emotional processes, such as flexible thinking, empathy and love, to provide some explanations for ayahuasca’s potential beneficial effects on depression, anxiety, PTSD and substance use disorders. Each speaker will also present their own unique perspective on ayahuasca’s transformative healing potential informed by different research methods.

Book Launch: Ayahuasca Healing and Science, co-edited by Beatriz Labate and Clancy Cavnar (in press). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

This book offers a series of perspectives on the therapeutic potential of the ritual and clinical use of the Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca in the treatment and management of various disorders. This book presents biomedical and anthropological data on the use of ayahuasca and provides critiques on how it is used for treating depression, PTSD, anxiety, substance dependence, and eating disorders. The volume also explores ayahuasca’s role in the psychological well-being and quality of life of humans, and discusses possibilities of it enhancing cognition and coping with grief. The book examines ayahuasca’s association with psychotherapy and also highlights the challenges of integrating plant medicines into psychiatry. Further, the book expands on some preliminary research with animals, suggesting that ayahuasca acts at multiple levels of neural complexity. The study on the neurogenic effects of ayahuasca alkaloids opens a new avenue of research with potential applications ranging from psychiatric disorders to brain damage and dementia. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals will find this book relevant to their work regarding substance abuse and alternative medicine.

Additional details on each presenter’s contribution to the panel:

Ayahuasca and the Study of Love – Adele La France

The concept of love in North America is in need of rehabilitation. At this time in our culture, it has been entangled with ideas of romantic love and sexual attraction and many have been hurt in the name of “love”. Carl Rogers cleverly disguised the concept of love as “unconditional positive regard” in order for it to be more acceptable in the psychotherapeutic setting. Love is a theme commonly experienced in the context of ayahuasca ceremonies. Under the effects of the plant medicine, participants often report experiences of 1. self-love; 2. love felt towards others (humans, animals or God for example); 3. love felt from others (humans, animals or God for example) or 4. being love. These experiences tend to be described as powerful and healing. Although there seems to be significant overlap between experiences of love and spiritual or mystical experiences, there is evidence to suggest they are separate constructs, in that individuals who do not have mystical experiences can still experience life-changing visions or somatic experiences of love. Given ayahuasca is considered a sacred plant teacher, what can it teach us about love and healing? This talk will review research related to love, and experiences of love in the context of ceremonial ayahuasca drinking. In light of the findings, the presenter will also discuss the need for the broader psychotherapy community (non-medicine) to integrate love in the therapy space in a more direct and systematic way, including the importance of the verbal expression of love from therapist to client.

Emotional Phenomenology of Ayahuasca Experiences – Jessica Nielson

Prior studies have shown that ayahuasca can be safe and transformative under the appropriate conditions. However, as the popularity of this plant medicine continues to grow among “ayahuasca tourists” from North America, Europe and Australia, so too do reports of controversial and adverse reactions from its use in various settings. Given that recent evidence suggests that ayahuasca may implement its transformative potential through emotion-driven mechanisms, this presentation will focus on emotional phenomenology of ayahuasca experience reports from an anonymous online survey.  Overall patterns from emotional coding suggests that while there are a fair number of negative emotions being used to describe the ayahuasca experience, these experiences are mostly positive in nature. The most common theme that emerged was challenging experiences also being the most transformative, suggesting that this combination may be a mechanism by which deep healing from mental problems occurs with ayahuasca. Several respondents expressed feelings of intense depression and suicidal ideation before their experience with ayahuasca, who then described very intense ayahuasca experiences that dissipated their feelings of hopelessness and despair. While more work is needed to fully understand whether ayahuasca can be a safe and effective therapy for mental illness, these preliminary reports suggest that with the appropriate emotionally supportive setting, these experiences can be profoundly transformative.

Ayahuasca as mind-bender and soul-healer: unraveling its mechanism of action – Kim Kuypers

There is increasing evidence of ayahuasca’s potential therapeutic value for depression, PTSD, and anxiety. We try to understand the emotional and cognitive mechanisms underlying these effects by studying empathy, flexible cognitive thinking, and emotion regulation in healthy volunteers who receive ayahuasca in a social setting. Our focus is because the processes mentioned above, which are crucial for everyday interactions and cooperation, are decreased in specific pathological populations.  To date, objective evidence is limited due to a scarcity of studies. Nonetheless, previous studies with ayahuasca and similar psychedelics, like psilocybin and LSD, support the notion that ayahuasca can enhance previously mentioned processes. Importantly, evidence is given to suggest that this enhancement outlasts the acute stage, thus potentially persisting over time. Future clinical research into the therapeutic effects of ayahuasca could assess the relationship between the effect on higher-order cognitive and emotional processes, mood, and well-being and test their role in symptom alleviation in pathological populations in the short- and longer-term.

This presentation explores the topic of the commodification of Santo Daime. The Santo Daime doctrine was founded by Raimundo Irineu Serra (1890–1971), known as Mestre Irineu, in the Brazilian Amazon in the thirties. According to the myth of origin of Santo Daime, Mestre Irineu received a vision of the Queen of the Forest, who told him he would become a great healer; as a condition, he was asked not to profit from his services. During the eighties, the CEFLURIS line of Santo Daime expanded throughout Brazil and, in the nineties, around the world. Branches multiplied and diversified, and the mother church in Céu do Mapiá lost its ability to be the single provider of the sacramental tea and to be representative of all churches. In this fragmented and non-institutionalized process of expansion, each community ended up adopting different styles and strategies. Combining our fieldwork experience in Brazil, the USA, and Europe, we provide an ethnographic account on the different models of organization of daimista congregations and collectives around the world. We try to categorize and analyze their policies and strategies around their survival, including: means of access to the brew (either importing it from Brazil or elsewhere, or producing its own through the feitio); fees of access for permanent members, outsiders or visitors, and the visiting comitivas (group of Brazilian religious experts that travel periodically abroad); the physical spaces (house of community members, rental of public or private spaces). We argue that there is a big variation, with some branches being more geared towards forming communities that are self-sustaining and others being more workshop-oriented and commercial. We explore the controversies existing between these different approaches, and the contrasts between Daime as commodity and a religious sacrament. We look critically at the orthodox view that pits religion in opposition to money, as well as at the perspective that fails to recognize problematic aspects in the current transformation of Santo Daime and Brazilian religious expertise into consumer products. We take into account both the need of marginalized Amazonian groups to make alternative means of living, and the impacts that commodification processes might have on these communities.

Even though Mexico has an impressive bounty of flora and fauna of natural psychedelics and a rich cultural heritage of medicinal and other uses for them, due to regulatory challenges, clinical research with psychedelics has not yet resumed in Mexico.  However, promising findings generated in other countries have contributed research to the extent that health and public authorities finally seem to have become more open to allowing this field to reemerge. A few research protocols have been recently approved, including a transdisciplinary research project about therapeutic uses of psilocybin-containing fungi. In this talk, the recent developments and challenges in the field of psychedelic science in Mexico will be presented; also, preliminary findings of the above-mentioned research project on psilocybin-containing fungi will be shared. These include preliminary results from an observational study of the therapeutic effects of ritual uses of psilocybin-containing mushrooms for diverse mental health challenges and findings from anthropological fieldwork with Indigenous mushroom specialists. Reflections on how traditional knowledge can complement and enrich the rising field of psilocybin-assisted treatments will be offered. In addition, ethical issues, such as appropriation of Indigenous knowledge, reciprocity, conservation of culture and habitat, and accessibility of psychedelic assisted treatments will be discussed.

Ayahuasca is the generic name given to a tea historically consumed by people from various linguistic branches of the eastern Amazon, covering areas of Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama. After the “discovery” of the tea by rubber tappers, religions were founded in Brazil based on the ritualistic use of ayahuasca, which is now widespread in several continents. The recognition of “types,” or “ethnotaxa,” of vines remains latent among traditional religious groups, as has been reported by the original peoples. The tea used by different religions has distinctions, as there are several ways of preparing the tea, and people use different species in its composition. Banisteriopsis caapi is, theoretically, the most important tea component, as it is the species used in almost all compositions, and most people use the combination of B. caapi and Psychotria viridis, but some people even use a tea consisting only of this vine. We interviewed about 50 informants on guided tours through crops that are maintained by churches in different regions of Brazil and in areas of the Amazon Rainforest. The systematic recovery of orally-maintained traditional knowledge was associated with botanical collections consisting of dehydrated branches with leaves, flowers, fruits and/or stems, available in University of Brasilia herbarium (UB) and wood collection (UBw). These samples are the basis of several studies: phytochemical, taxonomic, morphological, anatomical, and molecular. One of the highlights of this research is the detailed study of the stems, since it is the main source of the vine’s psychoactive component and it is the most informative part of the plant for distinguishing the ethnotaxa, according to the informants. The study covers other Malpighiaceae species, including the ones that have a similar active principle as B. caapi but that are not of traditional use in the so-called “ayahuasca analogues,” or reported to be used by the original peoples. We observed that the richness of orally-kept knowledge among members of the religions is broad, complex, and difficult to describe and transmit in academic language, but it is a source that includes stories of the original peoples and should lend support to public policies for the preservation of the vine species.

White Americans often struggle with concepts, ideas, and understandings about race relations in US society and their ancestors’ role in creating and sustaining unequal and unjust systems of racial dominion. White Americans are socialized to view their place in society as a matter of hard work or through it through the prism of abstract individualism. Embedded within this worldview is a set of organized racialized assumptions, ideas, stereotypes, emotions, and inclinations about the “other.” White frames are an array of unspoken white rules and received misinformation about African Americans handed down from forebearers. This session will focus on coaching white participants to recognize these centuries-old European and European American racist frames in the larger society inform cognition to expand knowledge toward greater awareness and empathy towards non-whites. More importantly, how might psychedelic substances help white people gain greater insight and critical understanding for oppressed peoples.

In this presentation I will critically analyze discourses on the vindication of coca leaf in its cultural and historical dimensions, identifying limitations and contradictions in arguments aimed at reforming public policies. Without a doubt, it is vital to protect and promote coca leaf in its cultural and cosmological dimensions for Andean and Amazonian indigenous peoples. At the same time, the rights of peasant communities involved in processing the plant for the illicit drug trade must also be recognized. Here, a tension emerges between different discourses that hinders the possibility of defining a common agenda in search of new regulatory frameworks. A comparative analysis of the main constituent elements of coca cultivation, both for traditional use and drug production, problematizes the current counterproductive one-dimensional positions with regard to indigenous and mestizo rural communities.

Self-realization is at the essence of being human. The fight cannot remain static in any area in which it is located, be it science, art or medicine. That is why Dr. Salvador Roquet advanced psychiatric methodology by expanding his approach to mental health to reach beyond the biological model in order to address the individual’s psychic and spiritual needs. This led him to research methods embedded in the rich ethnobotanical wealth of Mexican Indigenous rituality in order to treat diseases of the soul through his work alongside various entheogenic cultures of Mexico.

Kené refers to the intricate Shipibo-Konibo patterns usually illustrated in tapestries or ceramic pieces made by artisans. To address the loss of income for Shipibo artists during the pandemic, Alianza Arkana recently published Kené Sikati Kirika (Kené Coloring Book), featuring hand-drawn kené patterns and connecting the general public with the unique legacy of ancestral Shipibo-Konibo geometric designs. This panel brings together Shipibo men and women to discuss the importance of Shipibo art, as well as the planting and use of traditional medicine gardens (Rao Banabo Project), in promoting Shipibo knowledge and keeping it dynamic and alive.

The peyote cactus first came to the attention of western medicine in the late 19th century. An extract was developed and sold by Parke Davis but it failed to find a niche in the pharmaceutical market. Around the same time, peyote became the sacrament of the Plains tribes ceremony that was formalised for legal protection into the Native American Church. A century later, the NAC peyote meeting has established itself as a powerful therapeutic invention for conditions such as post-traumatic stress and substance abuse. Why did peyote succeed as an indigenous medicine but fail as a western one? What are the lessons of this story for introducing plant psychedelics into modern clinical practice?

The Yawanawa indigenous people, who inhabit the Rio Gregório region in the Amazon rainforest, are a major force in the Global South when it comes to Indigenous uses of ayahuasca and sacred plants. Known also for their musicality, their powerful female leaders, their international festivals and sacred use of medicines from the forest, the Yawanawa are a shining example of the cultural strength and artistic wealth of Indigenous nations in South America. This talk will cover the use of sacred medicines such as tobacco snuff, ayahuasca (uni), sananga and muká by the Yawanawa, as well as characteristic elements of their traditional music, which is much appreciated in Brazilian ayahuasca circles. The talk will also reflect on aspects of ancestral spirituality and the alliances established between the Yawanawa and non-indigenous people around the world. In addition, historical aspects of the Yawanawa people’s struggle for autonomy and recuperation of ancestral traditions will also be addressed.

Marca will share their personal journey in the psychedelic community as a two-spirit member of the Osage Nation and as a therapist specializing in queer and Native American-related trauma. They draw attention to the fact that two-spirit people have their own specific kind of trauma, how psychedelics can heal this trauma, and offer practical suggestions about how the psychedelic community can help ensure access to and facilitate such healing. Marca and Katherine then fold this perspective into the larger framework of the conversation currently happening around identity politics and psychedelics. In the United States, efforts to ensure equity and access for marginalized communities have been consistently met with resistance from a portion of the psychedelic community that argues that taking into consideration race, gender, sexuality, and other vectors of difference is antithetical to one of the key insights of psychedelic healing—oneness. We show that this argument conflates oneness with sameness and drawing on our radically different experiences show that even though identity markers are indeed socially constructed, they nonetheless have very real material consequences on people’s lives and that refusing to address these in the name of oneness is a form of spiritual bypassing. We then put forth an understanding of oneness that is not in opposition to difference but in fact inextricably connected to it.

Wixárika Perspectives on Peyote Politics

Peyote has become one of the most debated plants within the world of sacred and psychedelic medicines. Transnational efforts to finance clinical trials, conservation projects, research and legislative changes have reinforced the need to center the perspectives, concerns and visions of Indigenous peoples who live in the endemic territories. This panel explores the question of peyote use and its conservation from the perspective of Wixárika (Huichol) scholars and representatives in order to help the public better understand the political, ecological and cultural implications of peyote consumption, as well as the imperative behind its conservation.

Perspectivas wixáritari sobre las políticas del peyote 

El peyote se ha convertido en una de las plantas más debatidas dentro del mundo de las medicinas sagradas y psicodélicas. Esfuerzos transnacionales para financiar estudios clínicos, proyectos de conservación, investigación y cambios legislativos ha reforzado la necesidad de centrar las perspectivas, preocupaciones y visiones de los pueblos originarios quienes habitan los territorios endémicos de dichas plantas. Este panel explora la cuestión del uso y de la conservación del peyote desde la perspectiva de investigadores y representantes wixáritari (huicholes) para que el público entienda más claramente las implicaciones políticas, ecológicas y culturales del consumo del peyote, así como la urgencia que es su conservación.

Additional details on each presenter’s contribution to the panel:

Let’s talk about Hikuri – Lisbeth Bonilla
For the Wixarika (Huichol) people of Mexico, hikuri, known more commonly as peyote or Lophophora williamsii is a flower that is religiously sacred because we consider it a teacher that has guided us since time immemorial. I will share how the Wixáritaari (Huicholes) care for, consume and connect with hikuri. I will also discuss my perspective as a young Wixárika woman, the problems and threats this plant is facing, and why they exist; finally, I will share the initiatives that Wixáritaari and non-Indigenous people are bringing about to avoid hikuri’s disappearance. I would like to speak about my organization, Hablemos del Hikuri, its objectives, vision and the work dynamic that we have with the community and that has allowed for us to work on this issue.

Lost in Translation? A Critical Analysis of Transnational Peyote Politics – Diana Negrin

The latest boom in psychedelic enthusiasm reflects, now more than ever, the significant ontological differences surrounding sacred and medicinal plants that are rooted in Indigenous territories and ancestral practices. This boom and the tensions it is creating is notable because of the increasing numbers of new circles, churches, organizations and companies that are developing, but also because of the remarkable flow of money that currently is being directed not just toward clinical trials but also toward projects that are geared at creating collaborative, intercultural conservation efforts for the lands that these plants are endemic to. This talk will examine the case of peyote as one that is emblematic of the divergent ontological and epistemological relationships that distinct communities have with the sacred plant. Specifically, I consider the political consequences of the ways in which Wixarika culture is deployed across borders to lend legitimacy to various non-Wixarika led initiatives.

Hablemos de Hikuri / Lets Talk About Hikuri Is a group made up of wixáritaari and mestizos concerned about the conservation of the hikuri, who have noticed its considerable decrease in wild populations both in Wirikuta and in other regions of the desert. They seek to create a dialogue with the indigenous peoples who have traditionally consumed the hikuri, to generate an exchange of ideas for the conservation of the plant, and promote a rational and sustainable management that allows the hikuri to continue to exist for many generations. They work together with the Wixárika people to reforest the hikuri and achieve sustainable biocultural management within their traditional ceremonies and activities. On the other hand, they seek a point of agreement and good relationship with the ejidos and communities where their sacred sites and transit areas are located.

Unión Wixárika de Centros Ceremoniales / Wixarika Union of Ceremonial Centers: The Union’s objective is to rescue, protect and care for the ancestral Culture, the Traditions and the Knowledges of the Wixárika people, and to protect Mother Earth, our home and the cause for our existence.

My presentation is the result of an analysis that begins from my perspective as a member of the Mazatec people. I will describe how my community has experienced transformations in our territories and social dynamics over the past century as a result of the advance of capitalistism and the formation of the post-revolutionary Mexican state. During this process, the notion of “progress” has served as an ideology to articulate diverse interventions including public infrastructure projects and the administration of culture. The market for sacred mushrooms emerged in this context, such that the “discovery” by Gordon Wasson of María Sabina’s shamanic knowledge and use of fungi was seen as a mere catalyst of a process that was already underway. The status of Huautla de Jiménez as the region’s economic, political and cultural capital was only further intensified as it became a center for the commercialization of sacred mushrooms and healing rituals. My presentation seeks to reveal and at the same time analyze the problems that resulted from these processes. Of particular concern is the growing scarcity of sacred mushrooms as a result of the disruption and human exploitation of natural spaces, the demand by different tourist segments, as well as local struggles for the administration of the cultural market. Faced with this situation, it is essential that sacrality and memory resist the intrusions of capitalism.

The aim of this talk to reflect on the ritual uses of psychedelics in ancient Mesoamerica, especially in the Aztec worldview, based on a decolonial approach. This talk is built on the data provided by archaeological evidence and historical sources, such as codices, manuscripts, and chronicles. My goal is to show the ancestral roots of sacred mushrooms and to go beyond the epistemological extractivism to achieve the recognition of Indigenous rights, especially those related to traditional knowledge. First, I will explain the historical sources and the methodology needed to talk about psychedelics in ancient Mesoamerica and Aztec culture, in order to go beyond misconceptions and cultural appropriation. Next, this talk will explain Xochipilli´s iconography. Xochipilli is the deity of song, flowers, and pleasure, who is associated with different psychedelics plants such as: ololiuhqui (morning glory), sacred mushrooms, and sinicuichi (Heimia salicifolia); then, I will explain, briefly, the ritual uses of psychedelics; especially, sacred mushrooms, because there is a wide array of songs that address this topic. Third, I will display and give an explanation of the iconography and psychedelic plants associated with Tlaloc, the “God of Rain,” such as yauhtli (Tagetes lucida) and ololiuhqui. Then, I will describe a ceremony, compiled in the Florentine Codex, that is perhaps the most ancient written source about a complete ritual with sacred mushrooms in Mesoamerica. Lastly, this talk will address the information provided by the historical sources produced during the early colonial period (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) in the Florentine Codex and the Badian Codex related to the medical uses and divinatory rituals of psychedelic plants, such as peyote, toloatzin (Datura innoxia), and sacred mushrooms.

This presentation is based on my personal voyage from a professional athlete, through injury, early retirement, social detachment, and ultimately a recovery that brought renewal and reconnection. In a highly personalized account of my own healing journey, I recount the story of how psychedelics helped me regain my life, reconnect with my family, and how I want to use my story to help other brain injury survivors. For much of my life, my identity was associated with being a hockey player. I was forced into early retirement in 2015 after a 7th diagnosed concussion. Retirement for me meant that I lost community, purpose, routine, and I quickly realized that I was on my own to discover who I was as a person without the identity of athlete, teammate, hockey player. I also learned to advocate for myself as a patient, now dealing with the associated symptoms of repetitive head and emotional trauma. I spent 6 years trying to recover my quality of life. Despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on traditional western medicine, it ultimately became an unsustainable model for me. I turned to psychedelics in an effort to save my life. When I did, I truly gained insight and peace into the suffering I had caused and endured growing up in a culture that harbours an environment of abuse. I am motivated to tell my story in an effort to help traumatic brain injury survivors better understand their symptoms and know exactly where to turn to for treatment options. 

Calls to decolonize the University, Disciplines (such as anthropology) or (Western) Theory have boomed in recent years. While this is a positive step – drawing awareness to ongoing colonial violence and its roots in Western institutions and knowledge practices – decolonial thinkers warn that “decolonization is not a metaphor” (Tuck & Yang 2012). Indeed, the metaphorization of decolonization runs the risk of rescuing “settler futurity,” which is to say that there can be no decolonial theory without a decolonial practice (Rivera Cusicanqui 2010). What can reciprocity – beyond tokenization – mean in this context? In this talk I explore some of the challenges of undoing the pernicious coloniality of knowledge (Quijano 1997) from within the academy. Drawing on insights generated in a collaborative multi-sited ethnographic project on the global circulation of ayahuasca healing practices (in the “Forest,” “City” and “Lab”) I reflect on the politics of bridging knowledges. I first examine some incommensurabilities between social science and biomedical practices of evidence, particularly as they are leveraged in public health policy-making and argue that we need to move from being interdisciplinary to being un-disciplined. In the wake of the COVID pandemic, “conspirituality” (Ward & Voas 2011) has reached new heights among (white) alternative healing and ecologically-minded circles, leading us to ask afresh what practices of science – after epistemicide – are needed to foster social justice and regeneration. Thinking and working alongside our Shipibo and Huni Kuin Indigenous collaborators, our team has sought to tackle the colonialism inherent within the administrative and ethical apparatus of the University in order to construct inquiries collaboratively and honour the integrity of Indigenous knowledges. This has led us to foreground the question of imagining otherwise (Dillon 2012, Gumbs 2020, Povinelli 2016) and develop methodologies to hold space for encounters that potentiate transformation.

The Fly Agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria) is best known for its striking bespeckled crimson cap and its frequent depiction in fairytales. In psychedelic circles it is recognized for its hallucinatory effect, but for a variety of reasons it has come to be viewed as a 2^nd-tier substance, a mere curiosity among more esteemed plant and fungal medicines and has similarly been overlooked by psychedelic researchers – however, the Fly Agaric is an important source of compounds with significant medical, chemical, and pharmacological potential. Unlike its Psilocybe cousins the Fly Agaric’s active compound, muscimol, acts on the brain’s GABAergic system, and studies have shown a potential role for this compound in treating pain, inflammation, anxiety, cognitive decline, and cancer. Other constituents of the mushroom similarly demonstrate antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory potential, and the Fly Agaric is also considered a promising source of provitamin D and vitamin D. Evidence for the Fly Agaric’s historical use in sacred and religious rituals is also greater than for other similar psychoactive plants and fungi. The most valid of these ethnomycological hypotheses are those in which a stylistic detail or ethnographic correspondence is observed that removes any interpretive doubt. The distinctive Fly Agaric lends itself well to this type of study and clear representations of this mushroom can be seen at archaeological sites from around the world. In this panel, the pharmacological properties and therapeutic potential of this mushroom will be explored, as well as archaeological evidence of its ritual use in the Americas and elsewhere.

I am a representative of the Kaxinawá (Cashinahua) Indians from the state of Acre in Brazil. Traditional Brazilian indigenous communities such as mine have used ayahuasca as a medicinal plant since time immemorial. Today, the use of ayahuasca is spreading to the Western world. Recently, a large number of indigenous people have traveled the world, especially in Europe, where they present their culture, offer shamanic rituals and spread the use of ayahuasca to bring healing to the West. Many shamanic groups and healers have emerged, spreading the use of ayahuasca to urban areas of large cities. I myself have been traveling the world for several years. I feel privileged by the experiences I have had, which until recently would have been impossible for me. As a child, not even in my wildest dreams could I imagine that I would travel the world and teach people about my culture and tribal traditions. While the global spread of ayahuasca and indigenous culture is something that I support, and that has brought me joy and many opportunities, there are some things that concern me. My main worry is that my people and our culture will be forgotten as more and more Westerners are introduced to ayahuasca in foreign contexts. Its original meaning and guardians may be lost. I believe that the problem with ayahuasca is, in essence, a human rights issue: as an indigenous representative from the Amazon forest, I want to speak to you about my views of the ongoing globalization of ayahuasca, and how we might move forward together on this issue.

The Peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii) is sacred to the Huichol (Wixárika) Indians of Mexico and to members of the Native American Church (NAC). From the 1970’s onward, I have been carrying out fieldwork among the Huichol Indians. Utilizing the anthropological approach of participant/observation, I have gained a deeper understanding of peyote as a powerful plant ally in Huichol traditions. In the 1990’s, while residing in South Texas, I was fortunate to travel often to the nearby “Peyote Gardens” and to the home of Mrs. Amada Cardenas, the first federally licensed peyote dealer in the United States. Native Americans came on pilgrimage to this area and to Amada’s home to acquire peyote and conduct their ceremonies. Learning about peyote on the U.S. side of the border gave me an opportunity to gain greater awareness about peyote from a NAC perspective. This presentation will describe events and discoveries that I, as an ethnographer, have experienced while participating with Huichol families and friends on the pilgrimage to the peyote desert, Wirikuta, and Huichol peyote ceremonies in their aboriginal temples and family shrines in their ranches in the sierra as well as realizations I had about peyote while participating in NAC prayer meetings at the homestead of Mrs. Cardenas. In conclusion, I will discuss ways in which experiencing peyote within the contexts of Huichol and NAC traditions have brought personal insights, informed my ethnographic research, and given me a deeper appreciation for humanity.

This presentation will focus on the usage of the cannabis flower by Rastafari in the context of its link to a long mystic religio-political tradition, re-emergent as a core aspect of this new worldview.  It will pursue this conversation through an ethnographic method, linking Rastafari cannabis culture to hybrid African new world redemption praxis.

Over the past ten years there has been a steady increase in the use of and discussion about 5-MeO-DMT in the form of the ‘toad medicine’. Although some purport a long history of indigenous use of this psychedelic substance, there is a lack of evidence to back up these claims. Nevertheless, the self-proclaimed shamans and session facilitators in the new culture that grew out of these myths have breached psychedelic communities around the globe. Although recent scientific evidence has attempted to document the epidemiology, acute effects, and short and long-term outcomes of the use of toad medicine and the synthetic alternative (i.e., synthetic 5-MeO-DMT), these publications and the recent public portrayal of 5-MeO-DMT have exponentially increased the public desire to seek out these experiences. Indeed, people have clamored to have the opportunity to smoke the toad medicine, but a lack of ethical practices have harmed humans and toads as a result. This panel discussion will weave together these topics in order to provide a foundation of thought and inquiry into the new culture of 5-MeO-DMT.

Of the roughly 150 psychoactive plants known from around the world, 130 (87%) are found in the Americas, mostly from South America. Though not all South American shamans use psychoactive plants, psychoactive plants are central to shamanism and healing for many peopes. The archeological record includes clear evidence of the use of psychoactive snuffs of the genus Anadenanthera dating back thousands of years, as well as ritual paraphernalia depicting human-animal transformation. The most widespread psychoactive plant used in South America is tobacco, consumed in myriad forms and preparations. Ayahuasca is now probably the best known shamanic plant of South America, and yet despite much speculation to the contrary, there is little to no evidence about ancient uses of ayahuasca, and its widespread use among South American indigenous peoples appears to be fairly recent. Solanaceae, the botanical family of potatoes, is an especially important group of plants in South American shamanism, including powerfully psychoactive preparations such as Brugmansia and Brunfelsia that are used for diverse medicinal and ritual purposes. Though outsiders typically understand shamanism to be a form of spiritual healing, South American shamans perform other social and ecological functions such as negotiating with game animal spirits, revealing the location of enemies or lost objects, bringing new crop cultivars and resolving domestic disputes. While much attention has been paid to plants, a smaller number of potent animal and fungus species are used by indigenous peoples to alter consciousness in specific ways. This talk provides an overview of psychoactive substance use in South America.

It’s 2021, and our world continues to change, and quickly. Indigenous people are still here in North America, despite the last 350 years history. Peyote, a sacred indigenous medicine of North America, is still here too, offering physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual healing; offering cultural and identity reconnection for indigenous peoples of this land. Our medicine is however threatened in it’s natural habitat. Lucy, Azee Bee Nagaha of Dine Nation youth program coordinator and grandmother of 3, will share what the Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative plans for biocultural restoration of peyote way of life, the peyote populations and why this is so important to support in native communities and by other folks as well. How today’s cultural activities and conservation efforts in the peyote gardens and at home are a prayer for a sacred future. Miriam, Co Director of Riverstyx Foundation and IPCI interim Director and coordinator of the Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund, will share what it means to be an ally of Indigenous Medicine Communities and put herself and her work behind biocultural conservation for peyote and other medicines, their lands, people, cultures and future.

Ayahuasca can be considered a gateway to experiencing an incredible diversity of ornamental, medicinal, and master plants. In this talk and discussion, I will touch on the categories of plants and their qualities, with an emphasis on master (or “teacher”) plants I learned about in my many years of studying and apprenticing in the Shipibo lineage, from the plants themselves, through multiple dietas, and in thousands of ceremonies. This talk is designed to contemplate the limiting perceptions about interspecies communication and invites us to consider ways of seeing, experiencing, and learning that stretch beyond the conventional systems of modern culture. Opening to the mystical and the visionary, and tapping into the collective consciousness of all sentient beings, we can recognize our place in the natural world. This talk will discuss some of the ways traditional ayahuasca shamanism can aid and assist us in this quest.

This presentation will report on an observational study where we inquired into the potential of psychedelics for peacebuilding in ayahuasca groups of Palestinians and Israelis. We have quickly observed what is obvious to many psychedelic enthusiasts: ayahuasca-induced mystical-union and “oneness” can promote intergroup harmony and acceptance. However, aspiring for harmony in asymmetrical intergroup contact can hinder political liberation of the subjugated group, by creating an illusion of equality, and leading to avoidance of conflictual discussions. Can acceptance resist hegemonic structures? While the core experiential tenet of Western psychedelic practices is the mystical-union and “oneness”, psychedelics have more to offer. In a few occasions, we observed revelatory-prophetic political events where individuals had a historical-political revelation which urged them to deliver an emancipatory “truth” to the rest of the group through a song. The revelation was painful, and the emotions which accompanied these events were of conflict, anger, and resistance towards the hegemonic social structure. These revelations were related to Palestinian subjugation, yet the delivery of the emancipatory message was experienced as a universal truth which applies to all people. According to our observation, participants developed loyalty to these events, which provided them with a sense of mission and meaning long after they occurred. This presentation will discuss the antithetical political features of the mystical-union and revelatory-prophetic events, e.g., acceptance, stability, and harmony, compared with resistance, change, and liberation.

Psychedelics and plant medicines do not exist in a cultural and ideological vacuum; the unfolding of experiences and their outcomes are thoroughly shaped by individual and cultural expectations and the underlying narratives —the stories that we tell about them, what they are and what they are for. Plant medicines such as ayahuasca or peyote, used by traditional and indigenous peo-ple, have been historically enveloped by the eco-social narratives of their mythologies, ontologies and epistemologies, which structure and support the healthy integration of those experiences within a tightly-woven communal and relational setting. Most Western psychedelic users, howev-er, often lack shared, coherent and structured means of sense-making, while also often lacking a meaningful sense of community, which is indispensable for integration, and a crucial protective factor against predatory ideological memes and personality cults. The epistemic and ontological background of many Western psychedelic users is often an ad-hoc collage made of cherry-picked aspects of indigenous ontologies, New Age spiritual tropes and cliches, selectively com-modified and re-packaged bits of eastern spirituality, esotericism or quantum theory and a strong emphasis on conspiracy fantasy, such as the often recycled anti-semitic tropes of global-ist domination, all pieced together by the markets of spiritual consumerism and subservient to the hyper-individualistic ethos of modern neoliberal spiritual subjectivities and their glorification of the self. In this panel, we will discuss and unravel some of the risks inherent in this potent and potentially dangerous concoction of “Conspirituality”, opening a door for better collective sense-making efforts, the adoption and promotion of better critical thinking skills within psychedelic spaces and better education in relation to the systems of knowledge and values of relevant in-digenous groups.

Bolivia has lived through a series of transformations in its road toward the nationalization of its politics around the coca leaf. These processes are a product of social and peasant organizations that, between the 1970s and the 1990s, constituted themselves as an organized syndicate that was able to confront U.S. policy that demanded that the Bolivian state prohibit coca leaf from a sustainable development standpoint and that led to the militarization of regions of production as a way to substitute these cultivations with agricultural projects theoretically “more profitable” than coca production.Beginning with the first steps to vindicate the coca leaf in 1994 (Government of Jaime Paz Zamora) and continuing with the social uprisings that bring about new leadership in 2006 with the arrival of Evo Morales to the presidency, tools are consolidated such as community social control, which has permitted, using its own norms, the reduction of cultivation of coca in tropical regions like Cochabamba and Yungas de la Paz.The current Strategy for the Integral and Sustainable Development with Coca (ENDISC – 2020/2024) created by the producing regions, proposes a new methodology for implementation that seeks the articulation and solutions to demands of the sector. However, work remains to be done to consolidate an integral system for the control of production, commercialization, basic transformation and industrialization of coca in Bolivia. These are some of the steps Bolivia has taken to advance its policies and today the conjuncture permits conversations on bilateral and multilateral treaties for the exportation of the plant given the affinity of policy and ideology with the Argentinian government, as well as retaking its request forreclassification with the World Health Organisation.

We are living in a moment when the public conversation is making major steps towards acknowledging how destructive institutionalized racism, misogyny and homophobia are. At the same time, there has been an explosion of healing through traditional practices such as ayahuasca and other plant medicines. In the decade I have spent using Amazonian plant medicine to work with an ethnically, sexually and economically diverse clientele my observation has been that as damaging as society is, the most injurious traumas come from closer to home – usually from within one’s own family.  Although the external factors influence what happens in the home, the most impactful traumas – such as abandonment and severe forms of abuse – appear to injure people in similar ways no matter their race, what they look like, or how much money they make. My experiences have led me to an interesting quandary: while it is becoming increasingly clear how destructive the marginalization of individual population groups is, is it possible that the human organism’s response to trauma – what it does to us and how we heal from it – is deeper than the categories into which the world has divided us? If so, does that mean that the work we do to heal our individual wounds has the potential to create bonds more profound than the societal barriers that divide us? Can healing oneself be the most powerful antidote to the ever-increasing divineness of our modern world?

How much have the efforts to support the recovery, strengthening and development of Indigenous health and medicine systems helped Indigenous people in Amazonia to achieve this and improve their general life conditions? The belief was (and for some, probably still is) that white researchers coming to Indigenous people and speaking to them about the value of their traditional Indigenous knowledge would help them to reappropriate their devaluated culture. Has this really happened, and in what way? What results has this brought to the vulnerable communities in question? Based on 35 years of concrete experience addressing this issue among Indigenous people, I propose to reflect on this question; I will evoke situations that have occurred with different projects I worked on in the Peruvian and Ecuadorian Amazon between 1985 and 2020. I will also ask whether traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge holds solutions to the current crisis the world finds itself in. If so, how? To discuss this, I will refer to the Indigenous concept of “sumak kawsay” (translated as “life in harmony/living well”) adopted by the 2008 Ecuadorian Constitution and posited by some social researchers as a possible alternative to the concept of “sustainable development”.

In the last couple of decades, the popularization of ayahuasca and other psychedelic plant medicines has exponentially expanded their reach and their significance, well beyond the localized — yet multivocal— popular uses of Indigenous and traditional people, and into leading research and medical institutes in the Global North. As these plant medicines make their way out of the jungle and into worldwide cities, their uses, meanings, and articulations change to conform and adapt to the epistemic, cultural, medical, and political realities of late-capitalist Western societies. This panel focuses on this ongoing medicalization process, through which plants with medical, cosmological, and spiritual significance are being streamlined through the regulatory machinery as potential tools to alleviate the epidemics of loneliness, alienation, anxiety, and depression that plague Western civilization. This is a panel composed of both Western experts at the forefront of, on the one hand, bringing ayahuasca into FDA clinical trials (a quantifiable and homogenized treatment conforming to the demands of Western medical epistemics) and, on the other hand, Indigenous leaders, holders of distinct ways of knowing and being in the world, with perspectives rooted in enchanted cosmologies and the lived experience of centuries of colonial oppression and violence. We will discuss the potential benefits and the contradictions inherent in these globalizing and medicalizing processes, what that means for Western patients and for Indigenous groups. Special attention will be given to the importance of open access and  reciprocity as core values in order to avoid the asymmetric power relations that have marked these fragile intercultural dynamics.

Mexico is currently the second largest producer of illegal cannabis and the third largest producer of illegal poppy in the world. It is also the country that has most demonstrated the harms and devastating consequences of applying prohibition at any cost with numerous human rights violations and few results in reducing the illegal market. After achieving Supreme Court jurisprudence in 2019, the country will soon become the third country in the world to regulate cannabis for adult use. However, it could be the first country to do so with a social justice focus, guaranteeing the rights of people who use cannabis and communities that cultivate the plant. This presentation will provide an overview of the judicial activism to reach this point, the role civil society has played and the bill that is mandated to pass before April 30, 2020. The implementation of the bill will certainly pose challenges to a government committed to austerity, but it could also bring great benefits to society, particularly if it regulates the market with the objective of transiting the current illegal market to a legal framework, privileging communities that cultivate, reducing opportunities for corruption and doing so prior to a federal regulation in the United States. While it will not change the structural conditions of the country, it is certainly a step in the right direction towards respecting human rights, economic opportunities for rural communities and peacebuilding.  But only if it is done right.  Many questions remain in the balance.

This presentation explores the ethnographic emergence of psychoactive compounds in Mexico that utilize information and resources from different parts of the world and that have in common the combination of assorted botanical and animal sources with synthetic or semi-synthetic substances, using alchemical processes and chemical laboratory methodologies. Through a case study, we will analyze how the category “hybrid medicines” refers to multiple forms of combination and administration, which we present here in four non-fixed categories: 1) vaporized tryptamines, 2) non-traditional shamanic snuff, 3) oral alkaline stimulants, and 4) hybrid ergotamines. The study of these new forms of knowledge implementation and psychedelic consumption in this way allows us to understand the continuous reformulation of discourses and narratives from the psychonautical circuits, and the continuous innovation and creativity apparent in the search for and generation of new forms of perception, therapeutics, and empirical knowledge of reality.

Among the Mazatecs, the sacred mushroom, or ndi xijtho (‘little one that sprouts’) as it is known in Mazatec communities, is a sentient being that has a personality, intentions, and a voice of its own. During evening ceremonies with these beings, the Mazatecs together with the Chjines (“sages”) enter an altered state of consciousness that also implies an exercise in heteroglossia or polyphony involving mushrooms and other extra-human beings brought together in front of the altar. This presentation will address some examples of the political agency of sacred mushrooms, including relationships between the Mazatec and extra-human beings, as well the way mushrooms act as an embodied territory that has been violated in the name of science for the last 55 years, but that can regain strength with the psychedelic renaissance., Psychedelics and plant medicines do not exist in a cultural and ideological vacuum; the unfolding of experiences and their outcomes are thoroughly shaped by individual and cultural expectations and the underlying narratives —the stories that we tell about them, what they are and what they are for. Plant medicines such as ayahuasca or peyote, used by traditional and indigenous peo-ple, have been historically enveloped by the eco-social narratives of their mythologies, ontologies and epistemologies, which structure and support the healthy integration of those experiences within a tightly-woven communal and relational setting. Most Western psychedelic users, howev-er, often lack shared, coherent and structured means of sense-making, while also often lacking a meaningful sense of community, which is indispensable for integration, and a crucial protective factor against predatory ideological memes and personality cults. The epistemic and ontological background of many Western psychedelic users is often an ad-hoc collage made of cherry-picked aspects of indigenous ontologies, New Age spiritual tropes and cliches, selectively com-modified and re-packaged bits of eastern spirituality, esotericism or quantum theory and a strong emphasis on conspiracy fantasy, such as the often recycled anti-semitic tropes of global-ist domination, all pieced together by the markets of spiritual consumerism and subservient to the hyper-individualistic ethos of modern neoliberal spiritual subjectivities and their glorification of the self. In this panel, we will discuss and unravel some of the risks inherent in this potent and potentially dangerous concoction of “Conspirituality”, opening a door for better collective sense-making efforts, the adoption and promotion of better critical thinking skills within psychedelic spaces and better education in relation to the systems of knowledge and values of relevant in-digenous groups.