Psychedelic Science Meets Plant Medicine Traditions from the Americas (Documentary)

[Shipibo woman singing] [Lyre music] Come in, please. We are going to start... Well, be very welcome to the opening of our conference Sacred Plants in the Americas. Mexico is the country that has the largest flora and fauna of psychedelic or psychoactive plants and animals in all the world. One could say Mexico has deep psychoactive roots. The ancestral peoples, their civilizations were built based on the use of plants. These plants played a central role in their integrity, in their territory, i

n their sociality, in their ways of knowledge, in their celebrations. These traditions form our roots, they make up who we are as human beings. We are not ashamed of it, instead we are proud of it. It's not about asking for permission, it's about affirming positively what that brings us as human beings. And I'm very excited, but to not stretch on, I give you the most friendly and affectionate welcome, thank you all very much. On behalf of Dr. Agustín Escobar, general director of CIESAS Southeast

On behalf of the organizers, I declare inaugurated the works of this congress on sacred plants in the Americas or in our America, as José Martí very well said. Let it be for good and be very successful. We organized this conference of Sacred Plants in the Americas to show that the subject of psychoactive plants, which are central in Amerindian cultures, remains very stigmatized. These plants are central to the identity of these peoples, to their stories, to their own understanding of what it me

ans to be human. Then the objective of this conference was also promoting this dialogue between scientists and indigenous leaders. -From today? -Yes. I have to check with Horacio because we had figured it out. We are organizing this conference for two and a half years with a team of mainly two people: myself and my assistant Horacio Guevara. –Have you seen Bia? –Yeah, she's in the front row of Veleros room. –Veleros? OK, thanks. It was decided to do it in Ajijic so that all the speakers could b

e together in one place. We wanted to bring back this dialogue that we believe important, which is outside the rooms, outside of papers, which is where connections between researchers happen. The idea emerged in January 2016, the idea was to make a conference focused on plants, not so much on drug policies, which was what we did in 2015. We sent an invitation email to all the universities of Anthropology in Latin America, to all Anthropology departments in Latin America. And from being a congres

s where we had planned to have only two rooms and two days, it became a congress of four rooms, three days. It is very difficult, as an academic, to include indigenous participation. We, as a society, are products of a colonial system. We have made a special effort to give voice to the indigenous people here. We consider indigenous people our master speakers. It all started in 2009 when the Secretary of Economy gave 22 mining concessions to a Canadian company called First Majestic Silver Corp.

So far there are more than 78 mining concessions in Wirikuta. And there are issues, as my colleague said, with mining companies, nopal companies... You start to analyze how much we have done, how much has the State done, how much have the institutions done, how much have we done as the Wixárika people regarding protection... It has kept us with a fear of losing this sacred place, of water becoming polluted, of plants becoming polluted. Because in this place there is also the sacred plant híkuri,

which is our main deity, and most of all we want to defend both the plant and the territory where it grows, where it flourishes. There is an ethical and political question when we approach peyote, and when we approach the Wixárika people. That those who want to approach this plant and who want to approach this people, reflect on the critical state of shortage in which the plant is, and this has to do not only with the consumption or overconsumption of peyote by external agents, but also with

mining. There is a lot of talk about their ceremonial centers, but mining has nothing to do with ceremonial centers nor with water pollution. And there is a certain constitutional protection of these places that has harmed us, it has greatly harmed us. Because, look, mining gives millions of pesos annually to the municipality; it creates very well paid jobs, there is well-being for all the people who live there, there is trade, there is everything, but because of that protection, we are totally

ruined. It is also a very difficult problem for the shareholders of common land and that's why this dialogue is so important, It is so important to become aware, both about the looting... We will not be able to solve these problems: legistalitve, cultural, social; if we all don't sit at the table and talk. -Me, more or less, not that much either. -No, but it's pretty. Have they started yet? -Yes, they've already started. There too. [Drum music, indigenous singing] This is the matuna song. Jate

asked me if he can explain a little bit of what just happened. In his own way, he has presented an order, a method, a way. Human beings were left on Earth to take care of creation. And that creation has to be fed, it has to be nourished. You have to give, human beings have to give something back to Earth to take care of her. Thanks to our ambihuasca medicine, also known as ayahuasca, and with our ancestral knowledge, the taitas and knowledgeable women help us rebuild social tissues lacerated by

centuries of wars and exploitation. What we ask is that there be respect for our cultures, for our sacred plants. It is not about saying "yeah, I'll just have the experience with mushrooms or peyote". No, no, it is something very serious and profound, it is a great responsibility. And so I want to say that it is very important to know how to use these medicines in the most correct way. It is very important to share guidance, to warn that by using anything in an excessive way, it becomes desecra

tion, it loses respect, loses meaning, loses the sacred. And if people lose that, then the world will be lost in desecration, but we still have the strength of the spirit, the spirit is alive. Since the eighties, there has been a big worldwide pro-indigenous movement. It corresponds to a phenomenon that I would call the religionization of shamanism. Which is almost always simultaneous and sometimes shared with a similar one: the medicalization of shamanism. I want to reflect on this word: "sacre

d." Sacred for whom? What does it mean? Is it not a neologism for a world that has lost the sacred? I understood that it is not about researching the indigenous or researching their plants, but that I have no right to study them, I have no right to be the one to say if their medicine works or not. But I have the right and permission, if they give it to me, to talk to them and to work together with them. An ethical call. If I received an immense benefit from the indigenous peoples that changed my

life, my answer is to help to keep these indigenous peoples alive. The song of love, of affection. It's all to have love. We treat you as children, as our children. [Shipibo women singing] Hey, Juan Carlos, there's a hum in the room, but it's not the microphones, it sounds like [noise]. There's still a [noise]. So other people can stay in those rooms, you can underline the name of who is leaving. –Or we can put a mark on... –On who left, who is no longer here. Hey, have you got all the labels h

ere? All of them? Or are there more in the room? The spreading of this knowledge motivates me, that this knowledge expands. People came to me and said: "I had a completely different idea about the plants and the substances, and I'm leaving here with a different idea." So for me, that is very satisfying. We don't know that, but nevertheless, attempts to globally ban salvia have been pursued by some countries, an initiative aggressively pursued by the association of mothers of Drug Free America,

that sees salvia as another drug that can poison their children and lead them down the wrong path, and end up like myself: researching drugs. So consumption is everywhere and this is seen especially in illegal substances, where despite having prohibitive policies and having persecutions and expending millions and millions of pesos and thousands of lives, you can see that nothing is achieved with prohibition. We can regulate marijuana and that will be fine, and I think that many people who need i

t, will be able to get the plant. But if we want to change the paradigm, we have to talk about all the substances, and the substances that are being consumed the most, are according to these data: lsd, mdma, cocaine. We need regulation to democratize access, to ensure the individual freedom that we have to consume, to ensure conservation. And this, that I promote with my work, is inside of a social justice framework. In the case of peyote, what I said in my presentation, is that we have to think

about specific strategies because it can't be opened up for everyone. What the hell do we do to work together? Because we are stepping on each others' toes and the State is beating us, it is better organized than us. So, what do we do? Well, it is a little like playing on both sides; we are solving this problem, but we take part of it, but we do not want to see, or think or self-evaluate, if we are solving it in the best way. I think at the end of all the sessions people are left wanting to ha

ve time to sit down and do something. Then after we talk, how do we start it, how can we unite, collaborate? We are going to put together a movement, this wave that is going to be necessary to really change our policies, and that's not going to be accomplished just by people in drug policies or just by substance users or just by those who defend the use of sacred plants, but by all society. There were already substances that were old friends, but that modern medicine, because of prohibition, had

denied, which are natural psychedelics and sacred plants, and because there was a certain synthetic compound to which we had access, which was legal, and that gave us such good results, it made us think: well, why don't we go back to psychedelics? What I knew from college, what they taught me, is that we humans, when we want to heal, we have to work in four dimensions: psychological, biological, social and spiritual. I can see, as a psychologist, how these spiritual matters influence the psycho

logical, and how the psychological influences the spiritual, and how we can take advantage of the inclusion of this spiritual dimension for healing; let's say a psychotherapeutic or psychological or complex, holistic dimension, of a patient. And then this interaction between the energy, the spiritual and the emotional, and the way in which the emotional, then, influences the physical and the mental. The separation between the sacred and the everyday, let's say somehow it's something more fluid,

and it's not something that... that should be demarcated so emphatically, because the one cannot exist without the other. What is the role of sacred plants? Communication. Communication with the divinity through it, communication with ourselves and the divinity through it, and I say again, you can understand divinity in any way you want. All these elements that alter our consciousness are giving us the possibility to see the world in a much broader way, and that's something that, in my view, we

have studied little. We have data but we should study it more thoroughly. In other words, we don't need to have reason without heart. And now we have to bring the heart back into it, because we are still human. And we can't be not human, there is no way outside that. What ayahuasca does, or other plants, is to look at what's inside us. And what I understand is that we have the spiritual inscribed inside us. With the hallucinogens or with the sacred plants you get faster to your inside, the subco

nscious surfaces. But the interesting thing is the content of the hallucination, that depends on something else; that is, what do you ask the plant? Or what does your culture ask the plant? Or what do you expect from the plant? Why are we on earth? What is our relationship with our ancestors? How is time defined? How is the origin of life defined? Where do we go after we die? There are many strange and wonderful things. The world repeats itself and if we have patience, after a few million billio

n years, we'll find ourselves here again sitting, talking about this same thing, all of us. [Jazz music] [Singing in Portuguese] [Singing and applause] [Applause] I'm going to pass the microphone to you. You can sing or say a blessing or share a few words, as you like. [Singing in Huni Kuin] I am very grateful to all the participants, exponents of this event. Now let this go on. We talk about spirituality, first we have to fight to protect, to preserve Mother Earth, because without Mother Earth

, we human beings have no meaning. [Singing in Mazatec] [Music and singing in Rarámuri] We want life, we want to keep on living, we want to keep the sacred clean, but we cannot. More than talking about a plant, it is about the survival of a people, of a millenary culture. We call ourselves cultured because we go to museums, to see those that have already died, but we don't respect those who are by our side, those who are still alive. We do not respect the knowledge of the original peoples. We ar

e fighting for our own existence. We do not want profit, we do not want money, we want life and that's what brought us here today. So I demand respect for the cultures, and I demand that each one of you reflect at home, about all that you have learned in this congress. [Applause] Wirikuta is not for sale, it is loved and we defend it! Wirikuta is not for sale, it is loved and we defend it! There is a need to unite, so we have expanded the conference to three days and it turned into a conference

with 150 speakers, four simultaneous forums, representatives from Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, the United States, Canada. I think it has been a great success. I want to thank... Horacio, where are you? [Applause] Horacio has been the person in charge of making everything happen and he has been working for two and a half years in this conference, everyday, all day, thank you Horacio! [Applause] This system has to change, the great goal of this conference is to promote a refo

rm in drug policies and to promote an advance in all these matters. It was part of the challenge, it was part of the inspiration for this movement, so, let's remain united, thank you all very much! Obrigado! [Applause] I think this has been a great conference. All of us here, or at least all those that I have talked to, they have never had an experience of being in the same place for three days with the same people and with such a diverse group of people. What I really like is that we are seeing

different knowledges; anthropological, archaeological knowledge, scientific, traditional, of practitioners, and it really is a unique opportunity to share that. A good selection of people from across the Americas, which is great. This conference is great. Anyone can come, and can come for free, and can learn, and you can contribute your voice. And there is quite a wide assorment of ponentes, the people presenting and talking in the panels. And Horacio and Bia really pushing everything forward,

so I think this has exceeded all of our expectations. There is a very beautiful energy, There are so many different people having these conversations, it really is this intersection between drug policies and the subject of sacred plants, communities and it is international. [Mexican music]