Back To LibraryA landmark paper published in The Lancet Regional Health-Americas has established eight essential principles for ethical engagement with Indigenous peoples in psychedelic research and practice. This groundbreaking framework emerges at a critical moment, as Western science and commerce increasingly intersect with ancient healing traditions.
The Disconnect Between Western and Indigenous Perspectives
At the heart of this intersection lies a fundamental difference in understanding. What Western researchers term 'psychedelics' (literally meaning “manifest the mind”) reflects an individualistic approach that differs markedly from Indigenous perspectives. Indigenous Nations have their own names for these sacred substances, which might be referred to as Spirit medicines, sacred medicines, or traditional medicines. This distinction reflects a profound difference in worldview.
Indigenous healing traditions are built on what western scholars call 'relationality' - the understanding that human lives are deeply interconnected with ancestors, plants, animals, and the natural world. This system of healing is animist in nature, and inherently participatory and ecological, rooted in a sense of collective gratitude and reverence. Indigenous practitioners approach these medicines with an understanding of their role in sustaining not just individual health, but the wellbeing of entire ecosystems and future generations.
The Development of Ethical Guidelines
Led by Dr. Yuria Celidwen, a Nahua and Maya descendant and senior fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute, the research brings together voices from Indigenous researchers, traditional medicine keepers, and human rights advocates. The urgency of these guidelines becomes clear when examining current challenges. Sacred medicines are being harvested unsustainably. Luxury retreat centres capitalise on ancient wisdom while offering little reciprocity to Indigenous communities. Perhaps most concerningly, these profound medicines are often divorced from their spiritual and magical contexts - contexts that have been essential to their safe and effective use for thousands of years.
This was the first time a globally representative Indigenous-led group has formally engaged with the psychiatric and research community on this topic through academic scholarship. The consensus development unfolded across three carefully structured stages between October 2021 and March 2022. Through virtual gatherings, these leaders grappled with crucial questions: How has the psychedelic industry affected Indigenous communities? How can the field reorient itself toward reparation and genuine inclusion? What critical changes must occur before different knowledge systems can be bridged?
The Eight Ethical Principles
Through a global Indigenous consensus process, the research team identified eight interconnected ethical principles, organised into four essential categories:
Acknowledgment
Acknowledgment addresses the fundamental need to recognize Indigenous traditional knowledge as the root of Western psychedelic medicine. This category encompasses two principles: Reverence - honouring Mother Nature with a focus on collective care and ecosystem protection, and Respect - following Indigenous protocols and building relationships with Indigenous scholars and practitioners before any engagement with their traditions.
Knowledge Translation and Education
This bridges Indigenous and Western approaches through two key principles: Responsibility - holding institutions accountable for cultural appropriation and ongoing as well as historical injustices, and Relevance - ensuring Indigenous knowledge systems are properly represented in Western educational and clinical settings. This category emphasises that meaningful integration requires more than superficial inclusion; it demands a fundamental shift in how knowledge is shared and applied.
Intellectual Property
This tackles the crucial issue of rights and compensation through Regulation - developing legal protections for Indigenous intellectual property, and Reparation - ensuring fair benefit-sharing from the use of traditional medicines and knowledge. These principles address the stark reality that while the psychedelic industry grows into a multi-billion dollar enterprise, Indigenous communities often see little return from their traditional knowledge.
Belonging
This brings the framework full circle with Restoration - returning authority over traditional medicines to Indigenous stewardship, and Reconciliation - establishing genuine partnerships between Western and Indigenous approaches. These final principles emphasise that true healing of the relationship between Western and Indigenous medicine systems requires not just acknowledgment of past wrongs, but active steps toward a more equitable future.
The Urgency of Implementation
The gap between Indigenous wisdom and Western adoption is particularly striking to Dr. Celidwen, who witnessed this disconnect upon arriving in the United States. Despite coming from a lineage of healers who work intimately with plant medicines, she found Indigenous perspectives notably absent from the scientific discourse about their own sacred traditions.
The environmental implications of Western adoption highlight the urgency of these principles. Current practices often reflect a troubling disconnect from Indigenous values of ecological stewardship. Unsustainable harvesting makes traditional medicines increasingly unavailable for local use. The commercialization of these sacred substances has led to monoculture farming practices and high-carbon-footprint therapy models, including luxury retreat tourism that fails to promote true environmental care.
These challenges extend beyond simple resource management. When medicines are separated from their cultural context, they risk losing their deeper meaning and transformative potential. The current trend of promoting individual substances as universal solutions to human enlightenment directly contradicts Indigenous understanding of these medicines as part of a complex web of relationships - with the land, with community, with tradition, and with spirit.
A Way Forward
The paper emphasises that, while these medicines may offer powerful solutions to both health and planetary crises, their potential can only be fully realised when they remain connected to their cultural foundations.The eight principles offer a practical pathway, suggesting concrete actions like supporting Indigenous protection of at-risk environments where these medicines originate, establishing Indigenous-led ethical review bodies, and creating formal mechanisms for benefit-sharing.
As Western science continues to confirm the power of these plant teachers, we have both an opportunity and an obligation to move forward with respect, reciprocity, and recognition of Indigenous wisdom traditions. The message is clear: the future of psychedelic medicine must honour its roots.
Read the original journal article here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(22)00227-7/fulltext
Citation: Ethical principles of traditional Indigenous medicine to guide western psychedelic research and practice, Celidwen, Yuria et al., The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, Volume 18, 100410