Indigenous Amazonian Initiatives: A New Direction for Psychedelic Science
- Oioc El Origen Shanayoy
- Aug 11
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 12
By Arno Adelaars
Reflections on Indigenous leadership, ancestral knowledge, and the changing relationship between Amazonian traditions and contemporary psychedelic science.
From OIOC
We are honored to share this reflection by our friend and collaborator Arno Adelaars, who has been helping strengthen dialogue between Indigenous leadership and the European psychedelic community.
In this essay, Arno places the Indigenous-Led Plant Medicine Science Program within a much larger movement: one asking how contemporary psychedelic science can move beyond extractive relationships and toward recognition, reciprocity, and Indigenous leadership.
We are deeply grateful to Arno for documenting this moment and for his continued work building bridges between these worlds.
Indigenous Amazonian Psychedelic Initiatives
By Arno Adelaars
Psychedelic science is hot these days. It is a new, emerging field with a lot at stake. There are many promising developments with psychedelics for the treatment of mental health problems that until now were incurable. The future looks bright for certain treatments, and with that optimistic perspective, many things start to change. As always, some are good and others maybe not.
It is no surprise the crazy orange man in the white house is in favor of loosening restrictions in drug laws. Big Pharma and big investors come in.
This is all part of what is called the Psychedelic Renaissance. It sounds good, but there are some worrisome dynamics at play. Many ambitious western psychedelic scientists are ignorant about where these substances are originated. There appears to be a missing link…
Many of the so-called classic serotonergic psychedelics come from the Americas and have a long history of use. The magic mushrooms are a perfect example. Their psychedelic use was discovered for the western world in 1957 with the Mazatecs in Oaxaca state in Mexico. Magic mushrooms have conquered the world, but the original use by the Mazatecs is all but forgotten and does not play a role at all in the hundreds if not thousands of scientific researches that have been done since the early ninetieen sixties.
It is important this will not happen with other substances with a long traditional use. And ayahuasca may reverse this trend thanks to several indigenous Amazonian psychedelic initiatives.
Where does ayahuasca come from?
In May and June, Chief Alvaro Tukano, the indigenous leader of the Yepá Masah people, visited Europe. The Yepá Masah are known as Tukano by the outside world, but their real name is Yepá Masah, and they live in the border area of Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela in the wild northeast of Amazonia. The western world first learned about them when the adventurous explorer and scientist Richard Spruce had his first cup of ayahuasca in 1851.
Alvaro Tukano is an impressive man, even without his headdress of hundreds of Harpy eagle feathers, and even without knowing what he has accomplished in his life. He is in his mid-seventies now and is well known in Brazil for his never-ending efforts to fight for the rights of the original population, the indigenous people of the Americas. In the 1990s, he wrote about the constitution of Brazil to safeguard the indigenous rights. He visits the Netherlands as a keynote speaker at the International Conference on Psychedelic Research (ICPR). But this is not his first visit to the Netherlands. The first time was in 1980, when he talked about the destruction of the Yepá Masah culture by Christian missionaries at the Russell Tribunal on Human Rights in Rotterdam. Brazil was at that time suffering from a military dictatorship. Thanks to his powerful contribution at the Tribunal about the Salesian Society killing his culture, these catholic missionaries had to stop their activities in his territory.
Nowadays, his fight continues with different means. New technologies are embraced by indigenous Amazonians to defend their precious jungle from destruction. Satellites, mobile phones, and drones are part of the modern indigenous toolbox to counteract illegal gold mining, illegal logging, and narcotrafficking. The state-of-the-art AI headphones that translate English into Portuguese that he is wearing during his presentations at the international conference are a good example of that. Harpy eagle feathers and artificial intelligence seems to go well together!
“Richard Spruce is well known as a scientist and became famous as the first Western ayahuasca drinker, but nobody knows my great-grandfather who gave it to Spruce in 1851.”
His visit and performance are part of this South American indigenous movement to open up a dialogue with Western scientists and a breakdown of colonial ways of thinking.
Chief Alvaro gave a perfect example of what this means:
Richard Spruce’s cup of ayahuasca didn’t come falling out of the sky. It was given to him by a medicine man from the Yepá Masah, a people with a long history of ayahuasca use, going back to times immemorial. The Yepá Masah have a long oral history going back 12.000 years.
As a sign of respect, Richard Spruce incorporated Caapi, the Yepá Masah name for the ayahuasca vine, into the official botanical name: Banisteropsis caapi.
But how many people drinking or studying ayahuasca know about its original indigenous origins?
Alvaro Tukano did what he could at the International Conference on Psychedelic Research (ICPR) that was held in June in Haarlem in the Netherlands, where he was a keynote speaker. The format of a conference with hundreds of scientists listening was not his ideal way of transmitting knowledge.
Therefore, he did a special teaching ceremony a couple of days later where all participants shared his sacred plant medicines. Transmitting his knowledge can only be done in the original way.
It was the very first time Chief Alvaro Tukano shared his wisdom, knowledge, and medicines in the Netherlands. He promised to come back in early September.
Ancestral knowledge meets Western science
It is amazing to see how different initiatives start to flourish. A special indigenous-led initiative illustrates this fast-growing movement. The Organization for Indigenous Outreach and Conservation (OIOC), is founded by Kamëntsá (Kamsá) leader and Sibundoy Governor Taita Juan Agreda Chindoy from the south of Colombia. OIOC aims to reclaim the Kamëntsá (Kamsá) culture and restore the biodiversity in the Sibundoy Valley. The valley is a special spot, it has the highest variety of Nightshade plants in the world.
The Indigenous-led Plant Medicine Science Program unites ancestral knowledge and contemporary scientific inquiry through direct partnership with the Kamëntsá (Kamsá) nation of the Sibundoy Valley and the Kofán communities of the Colombian Amazon. It is a cooperation between the Kamëntsá (Kamsá) leadership and the well-respected Drug Science Foundation from London.
Drug Science was founded and is led by the toxicologist professor David Nutt, who became famous in some circles and notorious in other circles when he claimed in an interview some years ago that horse riding is more dangerous than taking MDMA. He was right, of course, since far more people die from accidents with horses than from taking ecstasy. But since he was the chief scientific adviser of the Conservative minister of health in the UK, he shouldn’t have said that. The minister insisted the professor would apologize and retract his words, or he would be sacked.
The professor kept his word and resigned. The whole scientific advisory board resigned in solidarity with him.
The Indigenous Led Plant Medicine Science Program invites western scientists to learn from the ancestral knowledge of the people that worked since times immemorial with these sacred Amazonian plants. It is a groundbreaking new initiative with famous shamans from different indigenous people teaching their knowledge in experiential formats. It offers a new model of intercultural and ecological science rooted in reciprocity, ceremony and the living continuity of indigenous knowledge systems.
Participants will engage in fieldwork of the botanical diversity of ayahuasca and related master plants, learning traditional ecological knowledge directly from local stewards. Through observation in ceremonial settings they explore how ancestral healing practices interact with biology, psychology and the environment.
World Ayahuasca Forum
The upcoming World Ayahuasca Forum is another example of this movement. The Barcelona-based International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research, and Service (ICEERS) has been organizing international conferences on ayahuasca since 2010, both in Europe and in South America.
This year, ICEERS asked the Yorenka Tasorentsi Institute to organize the World Ayahuasca Forum. The Yorenka Tasorentsi Institute is based in Brazil and is founded and led by indigenous Ashinanka leaders.
What does this mean? A European institution asks an indigenous South American institution to lead the way. This request symbolizes the anti-colonial and non-extractive attitude that is needed to honor and respect the region where ayahuasca is originated. The World Ayahuasca Forum will take place from 11 to 13 September in Girona in Spain.
About the Author
Arno Adelaars is a Dutch writer and long-time participant in the international psychedelic field. He has worked to strengthen dialogue between Indigenous knowledge holders and European scientific and psychedelic communities and is actively supporting the development of Indigenous-led initiatives and relationships in the Netherlands.
OIOC is grateful for Arno’s friendship, advocacy, and continued commitment to creating spaces where Indigenous voices can be heard directly.
About the Indigenous-Led Plant Medicine Science Program
The Indigenous-Led Plant Medicine Science Program is an intercultural educational initiative bringing Indigenous knowledge holders, researchers, health professionals, and students into sustained dialogue around plant medicines, territory, ethics, ecology, and living systems of knowledge.
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