Indigenous Use and Cultural Respect: An Ethical Framework

Most of the plant medicines people now travel for came from Indigenous and religious traditions that are still alive. Visitors arrive with money and good intentions, and both can do harm. This article sets out four traditions, the problems outside demand creates, and the questions a visitor can ask a retreat. For safety screening and medicine interactions, use the screening checklist; this page is about relationships, not risk.

Ayahuasca in the Amazon and in Brazil's churches

Ayahuasca is a brew of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and the leaves of Psychotria viridis. (Ministerio da Justica e Seguranca Publica / Diario Oficial da Uniao, 25 Jan 2010) In 2008 Peru's National Institute of Culture declared the traditional knowledge and uses of ayahuasca practised by native Amazonian communities part of the Cultural Heritage of the Nation. (Agencia Peruana de Noticias Andina (state news agency), 12 Jul 2008; Ministerio de Cultura del Peru, Centro de Recursos (hosted academic article), 2012) The resolution sets out to protect the ritual's sacred character from what it calls decontextualised Western uses that are consumerist or commercial. (Agencia Peruana de Noticias Andina, 12 Jul 2008) It protects a tradition; it does not license retreats. Our Peru ayahuasca hub explains the legal footing there.

Brazil took a different path, through churches. Its religions know the brew as Santo Daime, Vegetal or hoasca, and Brazil's drug council has worked with them for decades. (Ministério da Justiça e Segurança Pública / Diário Oficial da União, 25 Jan 2010) A 1986 resolution suspended the ban on ayahuasca, and the plants were taken off the prohibited lists in 1987. (Ministerio da Justica e Seguranca Publica / Diario Oficial da Uniao, 25 Jan 2010) The working group behind the 2010 rules included representatives of the lines of Mestre Raimundo Irineu Serra, Padrinho Sebastião Mota de Melo and Mestre José Gabriel da Costa, as the resolution names the lines of these religions. (Ministério da Justiça e Segurança Pública / Diário Oficial da União, 25 Jan 2010)

CONAD Resolution No. 1 of 2010 restricts the tea to religious ritual, prohibits its sale, and asks entities to avoid tourist packages that advertise its effects. (Ministerio da Justica e Seguranca Publica / Diario Oficial da Uniao, 25 Jan 2010) It does not recognise use outside a religious context. (Ministerio da Justica e Seguranca Publica / Diario Oficial da Uniao, 25 Jan 2010) It also asks the churches to take environmental responsibility for harvesting, and to aim for self-sufficiency by cultivating their own plants. (Ministério da Justiça e Segurança Pública / Diário Oficial da União, 25 Jan 2010) Read the Brazil ayahuasca hub with that in mind: Brazilian law draws a sharp line between a church service and a paid retreat.

One of these churches reached the US Supreme Court. In Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal (21 February 2006), the Court described the UDV as a Christian Spiritist sect based in Brazil with an American branch of about 130 people, and held that the government had not shown a compelling interest in barring its sacramental use of hoasca at the preliminary injunction stage. (United States Reports, via Library of Congress, 21 Feb 2006)

Mushrooms and the Mazatec

In the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca, Mexico, mushroom ceremonies were held long before outsiders took part. The New York banker R. Gordon Wasson and the photographer Allan Richardson ate the mushrooms at a night ceremony in June 1955, in the house of the curandera María Sabina. (McGraw-Hill (copy hosted by MAPS), 1980) On 13 May 1957 Life magazine ran "Seeking the magic mushroom", Wasson's account, and Albert Hofmann later wrote that María Sabina had been made famous by the Wassons' publications. (Life magazine, via Google Books, 13 May 1957; McGraw-Hill (copy hosted by MAPS), 1980) Hofmann isolated and named psilocybin and psilocin from those mushrooms in 1958. (McGraw-Hill (copy hosted by MAPS), 1980)

The town still lives with that fame. AFP reported in October 2024 that Mazatec healers in Huautla de Jiménez still hold ceremonies, that one curandera's family uses the mushrooms as medicine "not to get high", and that local healers discourage psychedelic tourism and screen who they will hold ceremonies for. (Proceso (AFP), 12 Oct 2024) Mexico's penal code shields possession for Indigenous community ceremonies from prosecution, but not retreats run for visitors. (Camara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Union, 13 Mar 2026)

Iboga and Bwiti

Iboga, Tabernanthe iboga, is the root at the centre of Bwiti, a ritual practised by many of Gabon's roughly 50 ethnic communities. (National Geographic, 8 Mar 2023) A 2018 pharmacology review describes the plant as used for centuries by the Bwiti and Mbiri in religious ceremonies; ibogaine, its main alkaloid, was later isolated and sold in France for decades. (ACS Chemical Neuroscience, 17 Oct 2018) Outside interest in ibogaine for addiction is recent by comparison; the ibogaine for opioid addiction page covers that evidence and its cardiac risks.

Peyote

Peyote is the clearest case of a sacrament that outsiders are asked to leave alone. The Native American Church was incorporated in Oklahoma in 1918, and US law protects ceremonial use by Indians under 42 U.S.C. 1996a. (Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, current page; Legal Information Institute (Cornell), current) Wild peyote is assessed as Vulnerable. (IUCN Red List, 2017) On 12 March 2020 the National Council of Native American Churches and the Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative asked that decriminalisation efforts "NOT include the word 'peyote'". (Psymposia, 16 Mar 2020) Peyote.com lists no peyote ceremonies for that reason; the peyote position page has the sources, and our article on peyote's cultural significance has the history.

Extraction and benefit-sharing

The core complaint is simple: knowledge developed by Indigenous peoples has been turned into products and services that pay others. Iboga shows the problem and one attempted answer. National Geographic reported in 2023 that most iboga and ibogaine used by clinics worldwide came from plants poached in Gabon's forests and smuggled out through Cameroon, and that Gabon passed legislation in February 2019 forbidding export without a government permit. (National Geographic, 8 Mar 2023)

The answer being tried is the Nagoya Protocol, an agreement under the Convention on Biological Diversity in force since 2014 that aims to share the benefits of genetic resources with the people and places they come from. (National Geographic, 8 Mar 2023) Gabon's environment minister authorised the first legal iboga export under it, from a couple who had planted more than 4,000 trees. (National Geographic, 8 Mar 2023) Under one programme, village associations that grow iboga agree to reinvest at least half of what they earn from sales in community projects such as schools. (National Geographic, 8 Mar 2023) It is a small, early model, not a solved problem.

Tourism and appropriation

Tourism brings money to places that need it, and it changes what it touches. In a 2015 study of 77 people who travelled to South America to drink ayahuasca, the risks participants named included lack of trust in the shaman or organiser, inaccurate information from them, and exposure to dangerous situations. (Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2015) Chacruna's community guide warns that sessions alone with a healer have been a common setting for sexual abuse, and that sexual contact between healer and participant is not acceptable in ayahuasca traditions. (Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, 2018)

Appropriation is harder to measure. A useful test is whether a practice still answers to the community it came from. Brazil's rules on tourism, Peru's language about decontextualised commercial use and the Mazatec healers' screening of visitors are all attempts by those communities, or their governments, to keep that link. (Ministerio da Justica e Seguranca Publica / Diario Oficial da Uniao, 25 Jan 2010; Agencia Peruana de Noticias Andina, 12 Jul 2008; Proceso (AFP), 12 Oct 2024)

Plant conservation

Demand also reaches the plants. Writing for Chacruna in 2022, the researcher Anya Ermakova described reported local shortages of the ayahuasca vine around Iquitos and Pucallpa in Peru, showing up as smaller vines that have not had time to regenerate and harvesters travelling further for wild ones. (Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, 15 Jul 2022) She notes that the vine's natural range has barely been surveyed, and that in Brazil both plants are cultivated on a large scale for Santo Daime and the UDV, although wild collection continues. (Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, 15 Jul 2022) Peyote's decline is better documented, with NatureServe estimating a short-term fall of 10 to 30 percent. (NatureServe, 7 Oct 2020) Cultivated sources and patience are the conservation answers in each case.

What to ask a retreat

Price pages tell you little about any of this; our ayahuasca retreat cost guide shows what centres publish, and how much Rythmia costs breaks one centre's price down line by line. These questions are worth asking directly, and a good centre will answer them plainly:

• Who leads the ceremonies, what tradition and lineage do they come from, and how were they trained?
• Is the centre owned or co-owned by members of a local Indigenous community, and if not, what is the formal relationship?
• How are the healers paid, and how does that compare with what the centre charges you?
• Where do the vine and leaf come from? Are they cultivated, and by whom?
• Does any money go back to the community, and can the centre say how much and to whom?
• Will a healer ever be alone with a participant, and what is the policy on touch?
• If the centre is in Brazil, is it a religious entity, and how does it square paid stays with CONAD's rules on tourism?

Vague answers, or offence at being asked, are answers too.