Praxis,
Are you aware that the indigenous medicines that you named were introduced to the dominant culture by Albert Hofmann and to a certain extent Ernst Jünger (who was not a very nice person)? Hofmann was primarily responsible for bringing something sacred that did not belong to him to for the most part privileged white young people. That is how they arrived in their place of use among the activist community.
Sky
Albert Hoffman is responsible for being the first person to synthesize LSD. Aldous Huxley is responsible for introducing the psycho-active effects of mescaline (the most predominant alkaloid in peyote, san pedro et al) to Western culture, but it was really Terence Mckenna and a host of other nuage anthropologists responsible for popularizing ayahuasca as well as sacred cacti. Albert Hoffman has written about these plants but he himself did not introduce them to Western consciousness. While I think it's fair to say that he played a part in this process he is certainly not responsible. Guilt by association doesn't apply here.
And secondly I would like to respectfully ask why it matters who introduced those medicines to dominant culture? Whether is was Hoffman or Mckenna or Wasson or Hancock or any on the long list of others....I never said that I was inspired by them or drew ideas from them or had any association with their work. I'm not promoting the use of indigenous medicines, that was the whole point of me starting this thread. I had some questions and the community answered them. And that's great. I wont ever take these medicines and I'm ok with that. I never said I used indigenous medicines extensively, I used ayahuasca once and felt bad about it and thats why I came here. It's not as though I'm giving anything up.
Im not trying to convince people here that psychedelics are good or bad. You're welcome to your own opinion about them but please stop trying to call my character into question because of my personal choices. And I don't appreciate being assumed guilty simply because of association. I like psychedelics, that doesn't make me Terence Mckenna or Albert Hoffman. Sorry if you don't like them but I dunno what else to tell you.
EDIT: You've made another post as I was writing this up.
Praxis, please research the individuals who introduced and promoted psychedelics to the counter culture. They were white men catering to white people. How can something born from racism, for the most part taken from indigenous peoples without their permission, be a powerful tool? I'd really like your take on that.
I think it's important to understand psychedelic history in the West. Psychedelic plants have been used on every continent for varying purposes throughout human history. A lot of nuagers might exploit this fact and take it out of context, but it is pretty well established that the use of hallucinogens is not a novel thing and it's not specific to just ndn people. Let me be clear here: I'm NOT saying that just because European Pagans might have once used mushrooms that gives white people the right to take any plant from any culture that they want for their own uses. The cultural contexts from which they come is incredibly important, and I think that's why we see so many burnouts in psychedelic culture. Dominant society lacks that cultural framework which is desperately needed to integrate the psychedelic experience, and often people are led astray and their use quickly turns into abuse and escapism. This is one of the many reasons that these medicines SHOULD NOT be taken outside of their original cultural context.
So, by the time the Europeans had colonized the Americas they had long since repressed the usage of many medicines including psychedelics. They persecuted ndn people for their choice of sacraments and built a nation based on their own values. Fast forward to the 1940's: Albert Hoffman synthesized LSD several years earlier, and it was not until now that he discovered it's psycho active properties. He is astonished by it and believes it could be a valuable tool for psychotherapists. Sandoz LSD is sent to doctors and psychologists and shows a lot of promise, but ends up widely circulated by the middle class youth. LSD was the first psychedelic to become popular in the West and it had absolutely nothing to do with the appropriation of indigenous culture. The discovery of LSD and the subsequent period of large-scale use and abuse opened an entirely new doorway for the white middle class who never knew such things existed. Anyone who knew how to read, if they were researching altered states of consciousness, would come to learn about peyote and other indigenous medicines that are psychedelic in nature. A lot of people turned on by LSD began to appropriate these indigenous medicines and it had a devastating effect. But psychedelic culture didn't get started through an act of appropriation. Many of it's pioneers furthered that agenda most definitely, but that's not where it got started. LSD is what started the craze and again I don't blame the substance itself as much as I blame the fact that it was used within the context of a white-supremacist society. Anything employed through this lens will have a negative consequence; if you look through red glass everything you see will be tinged red. And likewise no matter what you do, if you are doing it as a white supremacist, it's going to create harm. LSD doesn't have to be used exclusively by white supremacists. Additionally, and to restate myself, there are other psychedelics aside from the ones traditionally used by ndn people. And not just LSD. Psychedelics are everywhere. We don't understand their function but they are just as much a part of nature as carbon, nitrogen, or serotonin.
Furthermore, racist white men introduced coffee and sugar and tea to dominant culture. If we refuse everything that is offered by racist white men what choices are we left with? In my case, I reject what is harmful and I embrace what works. Using peyote is harmful, therefore I wont do it. But just because LSD was invented by a white man who might be guilty of cultural appropriation, I see no harm occurring should I choose to ingest LSD because I find it valuable. Forks were invented by Romans, who did a lot of really horrible things, but I am not going to stop eating with a fork. A fork is a useful tool, even if the people who invented were terrible people.
As a black person in America I find this issue even more difficult to deal with. My people were the rejects of Africa. We were sold into slavery by our own people and brought onto colonized land. I am living in a world ruled by white people, on ndn land, I have no connection to my ancestors, and all I know about them is that their native country sold them into slavery for some cloth and gunpowder. When it comes to culture, I have to take what is given to me. I will do my absolute best not to steal from the traditions of others, but as far as I'm concerned I can't afford to reject something that works for me just because the person offering it might not be a good person. As long as I am creating no harm in the process that is my goal. Let me turn the tables on you a bit. Do you eat with a fork? Do you use anything that was introduced or invented by Europeans? Do you eat sugar, coffee, tea? The people who introduced those things to you enslaved my ancestors, raped them, locked them up in prison, and left the survivors with nothing. But if those things work for you I'm not going to tell you to stop using them, as long as you don't take anything offered by them that rightfully belongs to me. I will do the same for you. I don't think that we can afford to reject everything offered by white people simply because of their implication in oppression....that's what dominant society is....we don't really have a choice because dominant culture has left us with no other options. Conform or be swallowed by it. And this is what we are seeing with ndn culture and it is heartbreaking. This is why I'm drawn to activism, because I don't think it has to be this way and I want to do everything in my power to fight against it. I want my own identity. But for now, I'm piecing it together bit by bit with whatever I can find that works for me. If I am cold and hungry and I have the opportunity to eat warm food I am not going to reject it because the person offering it to me also happens to feed hungry Neo-Nazis. We have to pick and choose our battles and I'm doing that to the best of my ability.
C'mon now yourself, Praxis... You state clearly that you're a psychonaut (kinda can't be one without actually using said psychoactives) and even though you ARE NOT FROM THE CULTURE YOU'RE APPROPRIATING FROM, you take it upon yourself to decide who uses it outside that culture and why. Your motivation of racists and weirdos having it in their possession and deciding YOU need to prevent this/inform properly/etc is the epitome of the abuse of privilege. You clearly state that even though Natives here and among the ayuhuasca cultures will adamantly disagree, you're still saying it's a transformative "tool" when in fact bridging whatever perceived gap you see between these cultures does nothing but enable those who will misuse these substances. Point blank. Whatever your intentions, that's what happens. It's been repeated on this thread and all throughout this entire forum as well as being discussed in the pre-Internet days of Native cultural appropriation and the misuse/abuse of our sacred rites and substances. I don't care if you use or not. That's on you. What is not accepted here is pretension and ulterior motive, if you had not noticed.
Why does interest in psychedelics automatically mean I'm appropriating ndn culture? Why does my personal choice to take psychedelics automatically mean I'm a nuager just as bad as the rest of them? I don't identify with new-age culture and I don't believe that psychedelics and new-age are mutually exclusive. I don't believe that any legitimate ayahuasca using culture would disagree with me saying that ayahuasca is a powerful tool. It is an extremely powerful tool. It is because of the fact that I respect that power that I won't go near it, it is clearly better off being used by traditional peoples who have been using it for thousands of years.
When I say "bridging these cultures" I do not mean psychedelic new age culture and indigenous ndn culture, and maybe that is where the misunderstanding lies? I meant activist culture and academic psychedelic culture. I'm not trying to bridge psychedelic users and ndn culture AT ALL. I would like to write an article that is addressed to folks who are attracted to psychedelics, and I would like to explain my own path thus far and how I've come to understand appropriation and why it is harmful. The whole point of the article would be to say that taking Ayahuasca and other indigenous medicines is wrong and hurtful and ndn people have a pretty clear opinion about their use in ANY context by outsiders. No hidden agenda there. No way for anyone to misconstrue my words as a promotion for appropriation.
Have you read Unsettling Ourselves? (
https://unsettlingminnesota.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/unsettling-minnesota-sourcebook1point0.pdf) It's like a manual about how as non ndn settlers we can acknowledge how our colonial mentality creates harm and how we can be better allies. A lot of it is written by white people talking about their own experiences and how they have created harm to ndn people, how they came to realize it, and how they changed their behavior accordingly. I'm attempting to do the same sort of thing but my target audience is different. Instead of white activists I'm writing to white people who take psychedelics. I made it pretty clear that I'm not trying to speak for ndn people and I never would have asked for feedback here if I didn't take that into consideration. If this community feels uncomfortable with it than I won't do it. The only reason the idea entered my mind is because I've seen how effective and widespread essays like Unpacking the Invisible Napsack are (
https://www.isr.umich.edu/home/diversity/resources/white-privilege.pdf).
Again....if yall think its a bad idea THEN I WONT DO IT. But why are you so quick to call my character into question? And why now? Nothing about that last post was new information. I believe I was transparent from the get-go and if someone thinks otherwise I would love to hear what I did wrong and what I could do better.
I am not going to go through and edit this, at least not right away, so I'm sure its got some typos and whatnot but hopefully it's clear what I'm trying to say. I really dont want this conversation to turn into my trying to justify my own personal choices. As long as I'm not partaking in things that don't belong to me, why do you care if I take LSD or other drugs? Im not taking from you and I'm not going to question your motives for trying to preserve your own traditions, I only ask for the same respect that I have done my best to show here.
