Keys to Decolonizing Plant Medicine Culture

The globalization and increased consumption of plant medicines like ayahuasca, iboga, magic mushrooms, peyote, and huachuma (San Pedro) are predominantly being driven by Western demand. Ceremony circles, retreat centers, and coaching organizations that offer ancestral plant medicines are expanding around the world. Most of them are owned and operated by white people, who are changing the context of the ritual container to suit their mostly white clientele, who are, in turn, paying hundreds and thousands of dollars for ceremonies and retreat experiences.

On the one hand, the expansion of plant medicine is helping an increasing number of people around the world who deeply need it, in spaces that feel familiar, comfortable, and culturally safe, with people they can relate to, in a language they understand.

On the other hand, to many indigenous, however, the capitalization of ancestral medicine and ceremonial ways of working with plants, feels like yet another colonialist extraction. But instead of oil, timber, rubber, or gold, this time it’s a spiritual extraction.

A white-dominated medicine community that hasn’t examined the harm of colonization, cultural appropriation, or systemic privilege can create tremendous harm for BIPOC, many of whom are healing personal and generational racial trauma in ceremony spaces.

This includes inadvertently furthering neocolonialist perspectives; fetishizing indigenous shamans or appropriating lineage-based healing practices one has not received permission to share; and perpetuating racial microaggressions towards participants of color.

How might it be possible to support the expansion of plant medicines around the world with integrity and reciprocity?

If Sacred Plant Medicines Have Become An Integral Part of Your Spiritual Practice, Identity or Vocation And You Wish to Deepen Your Plant Spirit Apprenticeship with Integrity, Inclusion, and Awareness

🔥 Get the Keys to Decolonizing Plant Medicine Culture Workbook https://entheonation.com/keys-to-decolonizing-plant-medicine-workbook/