Introduction: A call to Action



Enthoegenic shamanism has been described as a cosmopolitan phenomenon of indigenous medicines and sacred practices that has been identified in various cross-cultural contexts from the shamans of Siberia, Bwiti medicine men in Africa, to the Sadhus of vedic religions, and on to brujos and curanderos of ayahuasca. Broadly speaking the goal of this project is to critically address, describe, and problematize the Western use and appropriation of these entheogenic medicines, materials, and folkways sourced from the shamanic traditions of indigenous peoples and to suggest a way forward for the entheogenic discourse which is oriented towards social justice. This series of posts will focus on the entheogenic complexes of the Global South as they have become commodified items in the colonial enterprises of alternative health practitioners, New Age spiritual aspirants, and Western drug tourists alike. In conversation with the literature, this project will attempt to critique the psychedelic/entheogenic phenomenon as it has been treated, and mistreated, in the Western crossfire of prohibition, scientific research, medicine, and countercultural evangelism, all of which have been the provenance of white males. This is problematic in that it has resulted in a predominantly white discourse of predominantly indigenous medicine, religion, and knowledge production.

As a collaborative project on entheogenic colonialism, this space represents an effort to investigate the Western "psychedelic" culture itself. Each contribution will explore the premise that the Western psychedelic/entheogenic movements have, since their inception, faltered under an insular discourse of indigenous folk knowledge as directed by, and addressed to, privileged and disproportionately white Westerners. As such, I will argue that the psychedelic movement risks (consciously or not) reproducing many of the problematic tropes of exploitation and racial disparity that characterize other colonialist
enterprises. I will demonstrate the various ways in which this situation of privilege and relative exclusivity has damaged and forestalled various efforts for medical, religious, and personal integration of the psychedelic/entheogenic experience. This project seeks to address and problematize issues of privilege, diversity, cultural appropriation, minority representation, and prejudice which are deeply rooted within mainstream "psychedelic" culture. Up till this point the psychedelic discourse and the culture that surrounds it has been spared from taking a broad account for many of these internal social justice issues including :

—the growing drug/medical tourism industry taking hold in the Global South and its effects on indigenous peoples' rights and cultural sovereignty

—the corralling of drug decriminalization/legalization campaigns around the prohibition of entheogenic drugs (which are the least targeted substances for enforcement) rather than the decriminalization of all drugs in order to address the wider racially colored issues endemic to the War on Drugs. Let's get real, folks: the prison system here in the US is filled with non-violent street drug offenders who are disproportionately people of color not New Age spiritual aspirants or alternative healers.

—an allopathic medical model for psychedelic therapy which would place these medicines (once again) into the purview of pharmaceutical companies and the medical industry, which have demonstrably failed marginalized communities specifically in terms of the availability of mental health care, psychiatric intervention, much less alternative therapies.

—the rehersing of a scientific racism in the Western study of psychedelic/entheogenic cultural knowledges.

The relative sparsity of academic journalism and published research on the topic of psychedelic ethnography and social justice issues might well be credited to the obscurity of psychedelic drugs as a field of inquiry, the stifling effects of their prohibition, and the anti-drug cultural taboo—however I will exhaustively explore the degree to which this movement has hidden its lack of social accountability behind a facade of New Age spiritualism that has long been the face (the Caucasian and male face) of psychedelic drugs in the popular imagination.

right on!
..and not to mention cultural appropriation, right wing capitalist commercialism of old medicines and accompanying promotion of questionable practitioners, selective and or condescending failure to understand older ways in a molecule/product based model, and destruction of environment and species due to commercial forces, now including exploitation of endemic animal species (toads)..

..look forward to hearing more of your research, someblackguy, thanks..

Your map conspicuously lacks references to psilocybin and muscimol in Northern Europe.
White people have shamanic history too.

You mention some valid issues, but the standard social justice warrior rhetoric of "blame whitey" is so banal and passé.

Thanks for your interest! The map is a quick cut-and-paste sketch based on my limited knowledge of the history of a few of these substances—the focus here being primarily on select compounds subject to the culture of medical, legal, religious, and commercial interests of psychedelic drug reform. Please forgive my limited graphic design skills, and feel free to modify or expand the map as you see fit. It certainly is not my intention to delete or obscure any relevant area of entheogenic ethnography (quite the contrary). I apologize if I made you feel blamed or race-guilted, or if the tone of the intro makes you feel excluded. I'm sorry, that was not my intent. Though I'm not as familiar with the currency of anti-white prejudice or exclusionism within the psychedelic discourse, I certainly would welcome any relevant information that would expand my knowledge of the topic further and/or provide an interesting counterpoint.


Please feel free to critique, expand, or modify any materials. A more accurate and complete map would make for an interesting visual effect.

well pointed out blue lunar night..
colonisation and assimilation run deep - the Italians were colonised by the Romans, who were colonised by god knows what; the Celtic peoples were seriously culturally cleansed by the colonising Saxons and Normans; and the history of Euro-Asia is too complex to mention, but my point is, regardless of race, or colour, most of us have been 'colonised' to some extent, assimilated away from our true ancestral roots, divided conquered, and (often unconsciously) participating in forms of colonisation ourselves..
it's the 'colonisation' angle that interests me..

(ps from a biology and philosophy P.o.v. i don't really believe in 'race' anyway, more cultures and increasing, or decreasing, diversity)

Perhaps a more visual comprehensible image would be a map of the world with the names of the psychedelics and the regions from which they came colored in, rather than the chemical structures, as we are not all chemists.

I like the idea, though, a lot! I wish to add something to the discussion:

"As such, I will argue that the psychedelic movement risks (consciously or not) reproducing many of the problematic tropes of exploitation and racial disparity that characterize other colonialist enterprises."

In addition to tropes of exploitation is perhaps tropes relating to a deeper worldview paradigm, i.e. that of materialism, reductionism, and believing that consciousness arises from matter and not vice versa.

When we apply the Western mindset of the abovementioned materialistic paradigm to the more transrational and story/spirit-based worldviews of indigenous entheogenic traditions, we get, yet again, a misappropriation of their ways, even when cultural appropriation and resource exploitation are eliminated.

~

"—the growing drug/medical tourism industry taking hold in the Global South and its effects on indigenous peoples' rights and cultural sovereignty"

I agree that this is tricky territory for the indigenous, but I want to mention that there are many cases when indigenous communities are eager to share their traditions, culture, and medicines, even when money is eliminated from the equation. For example, the Nganga (Bwiti shaman) Mallendi, who grew up participating in Bwiti rituals at a very young age, when he had visions of White people taking iboga. He then dedicated his life to sharing iboga-centered traditions with the entire world. He believes iboga can be for everybody--young and old, black or white, etc. Another example is the warm-hearted generosity I experienced with a Shipibo shaman and his grandfather in Peru. In my dealings with them, it is clear to me that they genuinely want to help anyone and everyone, as they understand that White civilization is in essence, sick--not evil.

"—an allopathic medical model for psychedelic therapy which would place these medicines (once again) into the purview of pharmaceutical companies and the medical industry, which have demonstrably failed marginalized communities specifically in terms of the availability of mental health care, psychiatric intervention, much less alternative therapies."

I agree 100%. Actually, the allopathic medical model generally fails even the communities it *does* touch, in my opinion.

Great discussion.

Brown, yellow, white, red and black ppl, they all hunt down independent mystics and they condemn our various practices unless (we can be) forced into (hierarchy) sanctioned boundaries.

It's because they do not appreciate boundary dissolving mindset and substances/teachings (...we think).

Take a primitive karjite run country like Suadi (tassawuf is illegal there, incl. books, thought crimes...etc) One can be crucified and beheaded for witchcraft and sedition, the definition of which is formulated by an imbecile bandit wearing a ghost-shirt and a guthra.

In reality all cultures are similar to that. Even in tribal societies shamans are often accused of witchcraft, hunted down and killed, their huts burned (even in the amazon)....sometimes the wifes are killed too.

Intezam can be killed and crucified for what we have written here, should they find out who wrote this....

Better be careful, keep a lid on things and use the twilight langruish, with moar rules and moar regulations every second, how do you even fathom this is ever going to be better???? It's not! That's why we call it the eschaton. It escalates...

This is great! It makes me hopeful to see more and more people pressing these issues in psychedelic discourse. There's deep-seated irony (and probably a lesson or two) embedded in the history and modern context of psychedelic drug use, given the kind of experiences they tend to catalyze.

I'm really looking forward to see what comes of this, thanks for taking the initiative

Interesting project Someblackguy. Something that hasnt really been looked at much, but very relevant the modern day psychedelic movement.

I think it's fair to say that this movement, in the west has its roots in the synthesis of lsd by Albert Hoffman, which then led to European and North American academics, anthropologists and eventually 'beatniks' and 'hippies' searching for indigenous users of psychedelics, perhaps seeing them as having a more 'authentic' way of using these substances.

Another aspect is the breakdown of traditional religions in the west leaving a spiritual vacuum which leads people to seek out spiritual sustenance in far off exotic places.

Its ironic that a few hundred years ago, Europeans were colonising Africa, Asia and the Americas and taking all the natural resources of those continents while simultaneously denouncing the spiritual traditions of their inhabitants as being 'primitive' and 'barbaric', whereas now those same traditions are hungrily sought after as a cure for Western ills.

I think ideally knowledge and resources should be shared equally throughout the world, but because of the historical power imbalance between the wealthy and militarily powerful Western countries and the rest of the world, these kinds of exchanges tend to veer towards exploitation.

"Intezam can be killed and crucified for what we have written here, should they find out who wrote this….”

I’ll repeat that statement:

Intezam can be killed and crucified for what we have written here.

Here I was feeling quite self-satisfied with all my well intended efforts to root out others' denial, the blasé disregard to human suffering apparent in the political unrealities that inform this culture. I'd even worked these into neat bulletpoints: colonialism, big pharma, drug reform, scientific racism... all to be addressed and unpacked one by one for their dispelling. And all that while “Intezam” whom I assume is a national of one of many regions that restrict access to this and other similar forums on drugs, Intezam can be killed and crucified for the “crime” of participating in my pet crusade for drug justice. I’m not sure I can relate the totality of my oversight, that people might be killed and/or crucified for talking here. I cannot relate because it is beyond my ability to even conceive of that kind of violence. You see I don’t have to fear the repercussions of participating in this discussion. I’m not going to go to jail, for this anyway, and I don’t feel fear or face legal repercussions of any magnitude comparable to those faced by people in that situation. They were invisible to me and conveniently unaccounted for in the ultimately narrow, self-concerned focus of this project as I have framed it in the introduction.

I don’t have to deal with that kind or degree of darkness and violence; in fact it was so far from my consideration that I even felt emboldened, licensed enough to put my assessment of the "real problems" to the test in this longform critique. I'm sorry.

That feeling, that warm glowing sense you’re in the right and in the know, one of the good guys, and through your good works you are in the good graces of the good universe? For future reference, that kind of poisoned laurel crown is precisely what I mean by "privilege” in this context. So when I refer to white privilege, and you think “well I’m not privileged, I’m a nice person. I work for and deserve what I have” please remember that I’m not referring to your skin color in any sense of labeling “white guilt” on your every motive and bias, I’m referring to your privilege that your skin color (or in other cases nationality, religion, gender, ability, etc) might afford you and how, like my own privilege provided a naive, simplified worldview tailored to my own bias and best intentions.

Let’s have some perspective. Compared to the threat of public execution for engaging in banned online content related to psychedelics, the specters of plastic shamanism and cultural appropriation take their place, not as the pinnacles of injustice they once did. Compared to the unthinkable horror of being lynched for browsing the internet, the racism and colonialism I've brought up are at most just a bummer.

Intezam, I’m sorry. If what you say is even remotely accurate, then you are brave, braver than me by far. You are risking a lot more than myself and most others here to participate, and I thank you for your response and the value you have contributed just by coming into this discussion.

How can we help?
How can members of this community help you and others in similar circumstances participate in the forum safely?
How might someone be useful to members who face censorship/violence from authorities?
Examples: Mirror site? Secured email correspondence? Data devices that can be encrypted/shipped safely?

Would a space for discussion between members affected by censorship or hostile governments be a useful resource?

You’re not alone in the situation, in the past I have noticed others using the same encryption tactic. I naively believed this was some kind of stylized forum-speak (pri-vel-ege). I would hope that a tech/encryption savvy member can help you and others participate in this site more fully without your having to use "twilight langruish.” That cannot be easy if you are relying on translation software, or have English as a second-language; it would be a challenge even for native speakers to have to teyp leik this all teh time.

"with moar rules and moar regulations every second, how do you even fathom this is ever going to be better????” That’s the deadly truth about privilege, I don’t HAVE to fathom the solution because I have the luxury to be blissfully unaware and unaffected by the problem. Really, I was clueless.

I find myself once again caught off guard, saddened by the attitude and shortsightedness afforded by one person's unacknowledged privilege: this time my own. You see I started this discussion thinking that I might bring some grand perspective, invoke some change in the community I have found through this psychedelic experience. But the terrible thing about privilege, especially when it comes wrapped in ideologies like those espoused in these movements whose members claim to affirm the highest good is that when those well meaning champions for humanity are shown, or even suggested to be, just as liable for privilege, hypocrisy, and selfriteous navel gazing as everyone else they can sustain moral injury. Speaking for myself, the temptation is often to turn that demoralizing back on the person that caused it, clod that they must be. Who dares to tell the emperor that he wears no clothes, fail to compliment his lovely new tie-dyed robes?

I'm hesitant to ask for a response, Intezam. You know your situation better than we can; if you are unsafe to speak to these issues I do understand. I’m sorry to single you out with presumptions, but I found your post really upsetting. The fact that you are in any danger because you are reading these words is totally unacceptable. It is an obscenity. Please keep yourself safe.

So if anyone was curious as to what the sophomoric state of the psychedelic ethos looked like in action: there you go. That’s what I was doing, unconsciously and with the best of intentions. Admitting and sitting with that is NOT comfortable, not at all. It is ugly, heart wrenching and it makes me feel like an idiot to be honest. That's the feeling of privilege leaving the body.

..it is disturbing, and all solidarity i give to you Interzam..
it should be noted that there are actually a reasonable number of people here who have to live with the danger of highly intolerant and violent regimes (Saudi Arabia, China etc) and who do need to take anonymity more seriously than others here..but also the death penalty for drugs in a number of Asian countries (Singapore, Indonesia) is similar in brutality of disproportionate 'justice', and the paramilitarisation of the American police departments is not far behind..and indeed if me or you went to some of these places and spoke we'd risk execution too..

my point on race and colonisation is like this - being mixed race myself, from the white vs black ideology, i'm oppressor and oppressed..but it just isn't like that..my Celtic witch grandmothers were burned alive, and in Africa there are plenty of black people colonising or oppressing others..some places African neo-christians would kill me for 'witchcraft' for my nexus interests..and there's certainly a few 'indigenous' folk here in Aus,and elsewhere, who don't follow their own 'Law'..

it's the mindset of the coloniser, not colour, that is to me an aspect to be studied, and somehow dismantled in the world..like the 'partnership' vs 'dominator' model Terence adopted from studies of pre-history vs post agriculture..

that said, i agree there are elements of racism or culturalism in both the academic and 'new age' aspects of the rise in interest in entheogens, be it not conscious often..an example is when some Western modern person tells us all about how the such and such tribe use x plant exactly in some manner, and it's good for this and that..but when you say yes, but the tribe also says it's very important to observe some rule or behaviour restriction for example, the enthused Western entheogen advocate just dismisses this as 'supersitious', read 'primitive'..

this is an important line of research someblackguy, with a few tangents and aspects,good luck with it, and keep on..
and keep safe Intezam and all living under oppression of diversity and life..
.

So how does this community feel about "gringo curanderos". Is this an example of entheocolonialism? In my eyes, if one wants to abandon their cultural upbringing and their entire lives to devote themselves to shamanism, more power to them. As long as they maintain contact with and show respect to the original custodians of knowledge.

The booming aya industry is very troubling. A lot of people want to ingest aya with the mindset of "having a trip", and not for any sort of personal development or respect for the incredibly deep culture that gave them the opportunity. This goes hand in hand with the huge amounts of misinformation surrounding DMT and psychedelics in general. This is a human issue. Race gets involved when a culture gets stripped of it's validity in healing and becomes a holiday adventure. This is the reason why so many curandero's refuse to administer aya to people without a medical problem. I can see why people get incredibly defensive about their heritage, especially when it's being taken away from them.

I come from a conquered culture. And believe it or not, it wasn't good ol' whitey. So when I see the majority of the country proudly blazoning a religion that was forced upon them centuries ago, I feel very strange inside. Long story short, Bangladesh is 80+% Muslim. It's a Vedic country. So before the moghuls forced everyone to convert to Islam, the area was predominantly Hindu and Buddhist. Two religions that I associate myself with more strongly than the religion assigned to me at birth, i.e. Islam.

Given that, and the state of psychedelic cultural appropriation, I feel that it is very important that people remember where each and every psych comes from, as well as it's cultural significance.

True safety/dignity comes from awakening (..try to put a knife into that one) Once it happens (on the irreversible scale) it is irreversible (...all they can do is: try hinder the process).

And from that perspective the waste isn't really a safe haven. We don't know if this is really 'safe' here, even tho we too committed to exile in this foreign green meadows shire. Self implies other and there are countless distractions, some of which have wings. If you(s) aren't safe, how can we be?

We apologize if what we wrote was unsettling....

btw we agree with most things in OP post.
We try avoid, and never use any entheogenics from the Amazon or the funnies, but haoma from eye-ran and tai-wan as ...well as what we can grow from spores and seed....

Intezam translator here.

By "the waste" he means "the West."
Peace.

No...that is not what it means. It means an industrial/cultural wasteland (found in east, west, north and south)

Look at indo-malaya: large areas in borneo now look like the (surface of the) moon (due to shrimp farming) other areas are endless oil-palm wastelands.

Oh... my bad. Before in chat you had made that comparison between "the West" and "the waste" multiple times.

... the West throws moar food (and other goods/resources) away then any other region, so they are definitely part of the waste...(T. Mckenna said: the mushroom called that 'demographic Typhoid Mary' -- it is infectious)

I'm glad to see another person here interested in decolonizing psychedelic culture, welcome to The Nexus someblackguy Glad to have you on board.



I can't speak for the whole community, but here's my 2c on this very interesting question.

We abuse the word shaman, and in doing so, lump hundreds of unique, culturally-distinct social roles into one fantasy that is easy for westerners to consume. The term 'shaman' does not describe a curandero or ayahuasquero, it is, in fact, distinct to an Evenki-speaking group in central Eurasia. Similarly, those who use Ayahuasca in the Amazon are culturally distinct from the Huichol people who used mescaline. While the effects of Aya and mescaline are similar, and from an outsiders perspective, the use may seem similar, they are, in fact specific to their cultures.

When plastic shamans show up and start brewing Aya in their basement, while wearing Native American headdresses, and listening to Indian Ragas, they're mashing up many cultures without much regard for the various nuances of each culture.

If they're a white guy from suburbia looking to get connected to 'higher powers' and find meaning in a fairly bleak, materialist existence, they're coming at it from a place of multiple, intersecting privileged identities and their behavior seems like it's veering more towards 'exploitation' than 'exploration.' Bonus points if they have dreads.

That's not to say that if you're a white guy you can't use psychedelics, or meditate, or anything like that, but context matters.

As an example, I would NEVER tell someone that I'm brewing up Ayahuasca in my kitchen. Ayahuasca is a very nuanced cultural archetype specific to a group of people that 1) I have nothing to do with and no experience with and 2) who's continued oppression I have almost certainly (unknowingly profited off of).
I would, however, brew up an tisane of p. viridis and b. caapi , taking advantage of naturally occurring MAOIs that render N,N-DMT orally active.

The distinction should be self-evident. No culture has a claim to plants that predate them, or the biochemistry of tryptamine psychedelics. But Ayahuasca is much more than that: it is a preparation, but also a mythology, a sacrament, and a source of cultural identity.

Now, if you are a person from the developed world (whiteness is not required, Chinese folks are just as capable of appropriation) and you go down to Ayahuasca-using tribes, immerse yourself in them, learn their ways, and get their permission, you can call yourself an Ayahuasquero, but that's a much higher bar to jump.

Blessings
~ND

Couldn't agree more.
SJW? On my nexus? All of the sudden the place feels tainted. Is this what DMT leads to? Some pseudointellectual obscurantist backwards """research""", where white men of the west are to blame for everything and should check their privelege? Instead of coming up with better technics of getting more of purer crystalls I know have to perceive this forum as another western marxist college, where new words are made up to blame the west once again?

I think it's a little more complicated than that. 'Whiteness' doesn't just refer to the color of your skin, but rather, it is a complex phenomena rooted in historical hierarchies.

When talking about amanita use, the majority of the people who used it would be better categorized (from a sociological standpoint) as Indigenous, which occupies a distinct place in the social hierarchy than whiteness.

A great example of this are the Sami people in Northern Scandanavia. Despite the fact that they meet the biological criteria for 'whiteness' (in that they have low melanin production in their skin), descrimination against the Sami still is very common in Northern Europe. Now, I don't think there's strong evidence that the Sami ever used amanitas, but this should serve as a good example of how being colored white doesn't automatically afford you the privileges associated with 'Whiteness' and for white Americans (or more broadly, white people with no indigenous heritage) to claim an indigenous practice or culture is still appropriation.

The same applies to Indigenous peoples in what is modern Russia and their use of Amanitas.

I've never seen any compelling evidence that psilocybe containing mushrooms were ever used in culturally significant ways in Northern Europe, btw. If someone has links to journals, I'd love to read them.



I was wondering when this perspective would show up

From my perspective, this is EXACTLY what DMT and psychedelic use in general should lead to. These drugs are about taming the ego. You'd think that as the ego is ablated and one begins to perceive heretofore unseen connections between facets of reality, that the natural response would be to deconstruct those connects and learn how your being in the world interacts with others.

For the record, I'm a working neuroscientist, so it's not as though all people with these perspectives are mollly-coddled first year social-theory students getting exposed to Marxism for the first time. I'm personally more interested in anarchism, anyway. Kropotkin ftw

Blessings
~ND